Rain storms threaten Thailand cave rescue

MAE SAI, Thailand — The high-risk mission to extract 12 boys and their soccer coach from deep inside a flooded cave in Thailand faced growing fears Friday that weekend storms could make a complicated rescue almost impossible.

Rain forecast for northern Thailand could refill the Tham Luang Nang Non cave with water, and alternate ways to bring the group out — through an opening in the mountainside above, or by drilling into the rock face — were not bearing fruit, authorities said.

The boys and their 25-yearold coach were on a dry ledge inside the cave and were being looked after by Thai Navy SEALs and trained in the basics of diving in case they have to swim to safety, but it was unlikely that the group could remain there much longer.

A former Thai SEAL lost consciousness while moving oxygen tanks underground at about 1 a.m. and could not be revived, officials said. It was the first fatality in a rescue effort that has drawn divers and volunteers from several countries and captivated people around the globe.

“Circumstances are pressuring us,” Thai SEAL commander Arpakorn Yookonkaew told a news conference. “We originally thought the boys could stay safe inside the cave for quite some time, but circumstances have changed. We have a limited amount of time.”

Arpakorn and other officials did not give a timeline for when an evacuation might begin. Getting to safety requires a roughly five-hour dive through murky waters and suffocatingly narrow passageways — difficult for even experienced divers — to a point closer to the mouth of the cave where the group could be brought out on stretchers.