Rescue set back as volunteers pump water back into Thai cave
Rescue workers suffered a setback Thursday in their race to drain water from a flooded Thailand cave and extract a young soccer team when volunteers inadvertently pumped water back into the cave.
Operation commander Narongsak Osatanakorn said overzealous volunteers working on their own arrived on site and began pumping water into the ground, forcing it back into the partially flooded Tham Luang Nang Non cave in northern Thailand.
“They may have some belief that their techniques are effective for groundwater drainage, but anything that is not in the plan must be discussed with us first,” Narongsak told Thai media.
The volunteers were corrected, and Poonsak Woongsatngiem, an official from Thailand’s interior ministry, told the Guardian that the water had been reduced by 40 percent in the past few days, clearing a 1-mile stretch of cave the boys would need to cross. The boys are about 2.5 miles from the cave entrance.
Narongsak said the boys and their coach were in weak but otherwise stable condition and good health when found late Monday. “What we worry about most is the weather,” Narongsak told reporters. “We can’t risk having the flood back into the cave.”
Ideally, the water level would be lowered to no higher than the boys’ waists, so they could walk out wearing life vests without needing to don scuba gear for what would be an extremely dangerous trip.
The boys are 11-16 years old and their coach is 25. However, not all of them can swim, and some areas of the cave network where they disappeared after going exploring following a soccer game on June 23 are still flooded all the way to the ceiling.
Heavy rain is expected to start by Saturday, which will almost certainly raise water levels in the cave, making passage in some areas more difficult if not impossible.
Authorities are still exploring other options, including scouring the mountainside for other ways into the cave and finding faster ways to pump out the water.