Lull in rain allows Thailand cave rescue to pick up pace

Mto see how long it would take to get rescued people out of the cave into 13 ambulances and to the nearest hospital.

Australian police and military personnel joined other multinational teams, including U.S. military personnel and experts from a British cave exploration club. China sent a six-person team of rescue and disaster experts to the cave, the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok said. The group has experience in lifesaving operations in Myanmar and Nepal, the embassy said.

A second, private Chinese group calling itself Green Boat Emergency also arrived Saturday. “Our skills are search-and-rescue on mountains and in caves. We hope we can help,” said Wang Xudong, a member of the group.

Chiang Rai Gov. Narongsak Osatanakorn said the falling water level in the cave has helped the rescue effort considerably.

“Today, the situation is much better and we have high hopes, and will be here all night,” he said early Saturday evening.

Thai navy SEAL divers have been crucial to the search, but have been stymied by muddy water reaching the cave’s ceiling, forcing them to suspend operations again and again. With water levels dropping, they resumed dives Saturday, re-entering a chamber from which they had retreated earlier in the week. But they could not advance farther than 200 meters (yards) from their current position, the team reported.

In addition to pumping out the flooded chambers, rescuers were working on finding the source of the water that’s been rushing into the cave in order to drain or divert it.

Chaiwat Dusadeepanich of the Department of Groundwater Resources said that his team, which has been drilling for two days, found a small underground water source near the cave.

“But the water flow rate isn’t great enough,” he said. “We would have to drill in deeper to get to the source, but at least we found it. Hopefully we can start pumping out the well water by the end of today.”

Hopes were also high for finding some kind of access through fissures on the mountainside that might lead to shafts into the cave.

“Yesterday our team climbed into one shaft, and went in around 50 meters (yards),” said National Deputy Police Chief Wirachai Songmetta. He said the shaft had led to two separate chambers so far, and they planned to reenter the second one in a bid to find passages that could lead to other chambers, Wirachai said.

Officials also began dropping care packages into the shafts in hopes the missing might retrieve them. Each package contains food, beverages, a phone, a flashlight, candles, a lighter and a map of the cave.