Plans mulled to extract soccer team from cave

RESCUE teams in Chiang Rai in northern Thailand were giving crash courses in swimming and diving yesterday as part of complex preparations to extract a young soccer team trapped in a cave, and hoping for a swift end to their harrowing 11-day ordeal.

Divers, medics, counsellors and Thai Navy SEALS were with the 12 schoolboys and a 25-year-old assistant coach, providing medicines and food while experts assessed conditions for getting them out safely, a task the government said would not be easy.

“The water is very strong and space is narrow. Extracting the children takes a lot of people,” Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan said.

“Now we are teaching the children to swim and dive,” he said, adding that if water levels fell and the flow weakened, they would be taken out quickly.

The SEALS posted photographs on Facebook showing their members working in chest-deep water in the cave, adding that they were pumping water as “fast as possible” as they prepared to bring out the stranded group.

About 120 million litres of water had been pumped out by late Tuesday, or about 1.6 million litres per hour.

It was unclear what the options were to get the Wild Boar team out of the Tham Luang caves in Chiang Rai province, and how they would be steered through tight, fluid conditions and uncertain weather.

Experts say divers have required three hours to reach the boys, located about 4km from the mouth of the cave.

A video released by the SEALS showed two rescuers seated on an elevated part of the cave beside boys wrapped in emergency foil blankets who appeared to be in good spirits, occasionally laughing.

A torch is shone on each boy, who says hello and introduces himself with head bowed and palms pressed together in a traditional “wai” greeting.

The group was discovered by the SEALS and two British cave-diving experts on Monday, having been incommunicado since June 23, when a post-practise outing went awry, prompting the high-profile searchand-rescue effort.

The multinational operation has included divers from the Australian Federal Police, US military personnel, British cave experts and teams from China, Japan, Laos and Myanmar. – Reuters