Thai cave rescue
What next for the boys after their great escape?
On June 23, the Wild Boars football team embarked on an adventure. It was a player’s birthday, and a plan had been hatched. The 12 boys and their coach abandoned their bikes and boots at the entrance to a cave. Armed with flashlights, water and snacks, they set off into the darkness. An entire cave to explore with a band of pals and a good hoard of treats – the stuff of most 13-year-old boys’ dreams.
The last of the Wild Boars would not emerge until July 10.
By the end of the first night, their families were frantic; 24 hours later, a team of navy Seals arrived and began making their way into the cave. But they were used to tropical open water, not dark, cold currents of a flooded cave. They needed help, fast.
It is now estimated that 10,000 people participated in the rescue that saw the boys delivered safely this week – including 2,000 soldiers, 200 divers, and representatives from 100 government agencies. Military teams brought search-and-rescue equipment, the Americans provided logistics, and British divers navigated the cave’s most hazardous stretches.
For an underwater cave rescue, “it doesn’t matter where someone comes from, if they have the expertise they should be called in,” says Robert Laird, who runs Texan voluntary cave rescue outfit International Underwater Cave Rescue and Recovery.
“The key to the success of all this was that the Thai authorities knew to get experts, knew to provide resources, and then to get out of the way and let them do what they do.”
As the team of international divers got to work, Thailand’s king donated supplies, while local people cooked meals, ferried rescue workers, and operated pumps to suck water out.
As the world held its breath, the 12 young players and their 25-year-old coach were waiting in the dark, six fading torches between them, huddled together on a small shelf above the water. They had only planned to spend an hour in the cave. They were on their way out when they found they were trapped by rising water, the route blocked by what appeared to be an enormous sand dune. They dug for their lives, frantically carving through mud with their hands, trying to find a safe place to escape the water. One of the boys has since told how the shelf was so small that not everyone could sit down at the same time, so for days they had to take turns standing up.
Chief rescue diver Rick Stanton, from Coventry, described the moment he first saw the boys alive in the Tham Luang Nang Non cave as bringing with it “relief tempered with uncertainty”.
At Heathrow Airport yesterday, he told reporters: “As they were coming down the slope, we were counting them until we got to 13. Unbelievable. We gave them a little bit of extra light, they still had light, they looked in good health. Then, of course, when we departed, all we could think about was how we were going to get them out.”
The Wild Boars are now recovering in hospital, their rescuers have flown home, the world has moved on. But for the 13, trapped for 18 days not knowing if they would be saved, the scars from their ordeal will endure for years.
One who can come close to understanding is Hector Tobar, who interviewed the 33 men trapped for 69 days in a Chilean mine eight years ago. His resulting book Deep Down Dark, details exactly what happened when the San Jose mine collapsed in 2010 and how they coped with the aftermath.
All of them, he says, suffered long after they were rescued. “The men I met were like veterans of battle,” he says. “They had scars from their time underground, from facing death. For these boys, the process of realising they were trapped, that there was no way out underground, that is going to have been difficult on their psyches.
“You might not see the impact in the short term, but you will probably see it in the long term. There is a part of you that suddenly realises how fragile your body is and how fragile your existence is, your mortality. That’s a difficult thing for anybody to face, but imagine someone very young.”
The youngest boy, known as Titan, is said to have struggled most, crying and shivering from the cold. The coach hugged him to keep him warm and used his training as a novice Buddhist monk to teach the boys to meditate to preserve their strength and cope with the tiredness and hunger. Duangpetch Promthep, a 13-year-old known as Dom, recalled how they had to lick rain water from the roof of the cave. When rescuers eventually found them, he scribbled a heartbreaking letter to his parents telling them not to worry.
It’s the darkness that makes it so unbearably terrifying, says Tobar. “Especially when there is the possibility that this dark space will become your tomb.
“One miner told me that that’s where the madness is, the madness is in the dark. It drove him to the brink while he was trapped underground.”
Like the miners, the boys tried to save their torches, which gradually became more and more faint. “And so, the prospect of being trapped in the dark forever – because that’s what death is,” says Tobar.
If the wait was terrifying, the rescue was no less nerve-racking. Many of the boys couldn’t swim, and were weak from hunger and exhaustion. Some reports have suggested they were partially sedated in order to prevent them from panicking – the biggest enemy to underwater cave rescue. “That panic and desire to escape can take hold of you,” says Tobar.
“With the miners, they chose the fittest person to go first, then they
‘Part of you suddenly realises how fragile your existence is – your mortality’
went one at a time. If anything, the rescue of the boys was even more harrowing. You spend five hours doing something you’ve never done before, swimming underwater without any prospect of going to the surface.”
And just as the miners had to endure in 2010, the coming days and weeks will be a whirlwind for the boys. “Suddenly you are the objects of worldwide curiosity. [The boys] are suddenly heroes, and that’s not an easy thing to deal with. To become whole again, you have to return to a routine, to who you are, to your family and to your daily life.”
Their families will be now concentrating on their recovery, getting them back to school and football practice. It is is the day to day that will be important for them now, not global fame.
What did 13-year-old Dom ask for when he emerged from the cave? Grilled pork, and a new Samsung smartphone like his older brother. His old one fell in the water.