Divers saved four before rescuing Thai cave boys

Bangkok: Two British divers who helped rescue a Thai youth football team from a flooded cave had earlier saved four adults also stranded in the complex, says a new report.

The 12 boys and their coach from the Wild Boars club were trapped by rising waters as they explored the Tham Luang cave on June 23.

Officials leading the rescue effort called on the world’s small caving community, who formed a diving dream team led by Thai Navy SEALs.

On the ninth day of the rescue, British divers Rick Stanton and John Volanthen found the group on a muddy bank. They were pulled out a week later in a three-day extraction.

But days earlier, it emerged, the Britons unexpectedly found four Thais who had also become trapped while trying to find the children.

Droves of well-meaning volunteers and locals had poured into the area to try to help.

Speaking this week at a Hidden Earth cave community event in the British county of Somerset, Stanton said he and Volanthen accidentally encountered the quartet of Thai water company workers on June 28.

They had been trapped for 24 hours and their situation was desperate, said the caving news website Darkness Below in an article summarising Stanton’s presentation.

But Stanton and Volanthen only had only their personal breathing equipment with them, so they used a staggered approach. First they dived back through the flooded passageway to reach the next level of dry ground en route to the cave entrance.

Then one of them took off his gear. The other swam back to the Thais with the breathing equipment to bring them out one at a time.

This exposed the waiting diver to possible drowning had the area flooded suddenly. But despite a brief technical glitch with the gear, all made it out safely. — AFP