Long, dramatic rescue ahead for trapped Thai boys
Rescuers braced for a long and difficult evacuation for 13 members of a Thai youth football team found alive in a cave nine days after they went missing, as food and medicine was shuttled to them through muddy waters yesterday.
The 12 young boys and their football coach were discovered rake thin and hungry on a mound of mud surrounded by water late Monday, ending the agonising search that captivated a nation. But the focus quickly shifted to the tricky task of how to evacuate them safely from the still-flooded caverns.
Much-needed food and medical supplies – including highcalorie gels and paracetamol – reached them yesterday as rescuers prepared for a prolonged extraction operation. The Thai military said it is providing months’ worth of food and diving lessons to the boys to help them out of the waterlogged Tham Luang network in the monsoon-drenched north.
“[We will] prepare to send additional food to be sustained for at least four months and train all 13 to dive while continuing to drain the water,” Navy Captain Anand Surawan said. He refused to say how long they might be trapped, but experts said it could take weeks or even months.
The astonishing rescue sparked jubilation across the country after the country mounted a massive and gruelling operation beset by heavy downpours and fast-moving floodwaters.
“We called this ‘mission impossible’ because it rained every day... but with our determination and equipment we fought nature,” Chiang Rai governor Narongsak Osottanakorn said yesterday.
The boys were discovered on Monday by British divers some 400 metres from where they were believed to be stranded several kilometres inside the cave. In the video, posted on the Thai Navy SEAL Facebook page, one of the boys asks the rescuers to “go outside”.
The harrowing task of getting the boys out is complicated by the fact that they are in a weak state and are not experienced divers.