Boys found in Thai cave could remain trapped for months

SINGAPORE — They’re alive and in relatively decent shape, given their ordeal, but many challenges remain for 12 boys and a soccer coach who so far have survived 10 days inside a flooded cave in Thailand and are still a long way from seeing daylight.

Divers who braved murky water and strong currents found the soccer team Monday on a dry ledge more than a mile from the mouth of the cave. The team remained there Tuesday, no longer alone and with food, water and medicine, as authorities tried to figure out how to extract them safely.

This is the rainy season, with 2 inches of rain forecast to fall through Sunday. The monsoon lasts until the end of summer. The water in the cave is expected to rise.

The boys and their coach are not in danger of drowning. But the floodwaters cut off their path of escape. None of the boys can swim.

The joyous news that the soccer team was found alive has been coupled with vexation over what to do next. Technology is struggling to overcome the geology of the Tham Luang cave complex. There is no simple way to save the trapped team.

Engineers have drained water from portions of the cave, but it is a vast subterranean cavern fed by a broad watershed. There is no sign that the efforts have lowered water levels to a point that would allow an extraction on foot.

Officials said Tuesday they might try to bring some of the boys out within a matter of hours, but they also said they do not want to take unnecessary risks. At one point, officials suggested that the rescue could take months.

“We will not rush to take the lads out of the cave,” the governor of Chiang Rai province, Narongsak Osoththanakorn, told reporters, according to the BBC.

The boys range in age from 11 to 16, and are with their 25-year-old coach. They went missing on June 23 while exploring the 6-mile-long cave, which is in a park in northern Thailand near the Myanmar border.

The members of the Thai soccer team were discovered Monday by two British divers, Rick Stanton and John Volanthen. The British divers described their three-hour round trip into the cave as challenging because of the murkiness of the water. The rescuers had to fight a current as they pulled themselves through narrow, flooded passages by gripping the walls.