Life Bill Ralston
Cultural differences were brought into the daylight in the course of the Thai cave rescue.
From a journalistic point of view, the tale of the 12 Thai boys from the Wild Boars soccer team and their coach, stranded 4km inside a cave by rising floodwaters, had all the ingredients of a great story.
First, the boys were reported missing in the cave, then, nine days later, they were found by rescuers. Pictures of them perched on a ledge in the dark were flashed around the world, followed by confused news that they may have to stay there for months until the water receded.
Then more news came that Thai Navy Seals would bring them out underwater, only for the dangers of an attempted rescue to be underlined when a diver placing air tanks in the narrow, twisting passages ran out of oxygen and died.
Just to add to the tension, we were told that none of the kids could swim and, with months of monsoon rains expected, there was only a three- or four-day window for rescue teams to save the boys. In television drama terms, this was the vital “jeopardy” ingredient that keeps viewers glued to the screen.
Little wonder that a horde of media organisations from around the world congregated at the rescue site to watch, wait and report. Curiously, when the first and second groups of rescued boys were extracted from the cave, they were whisked away, reportedly to hospital for a check-up, and the authorities decided not to tell parents which kids were safe and which were still stuck inside.
The Guardian quoted an official saying, “They’re afraid it will affect the parents of the kids who still remain inside.” The Thai authorities, it seems, were working on the theory that it was better to drive all the parents mad with anxiety than just some of them. I presume they told the children that as they had spent more than two weeks away from their folks, a couple more days of separation were not much to endure.
There was also the suggestion from the provincial governor that parents would not be able to hug their rescued kids because of the risk of infection. Indeed, histoplasmosis is a lung disease that can afflict cavers.
If a dozen kids had been trapped in similar circumstances in New Zealand, then suddenly freed, I suspect any search and rescue bloke trying to impose the same conditions on Kiwi parents would have met with protests.
If it had been the US where the kids were being rescued, we would have seen Donald Trump wriggling his fat butt into the cave to clasp each kid to his chest with his tiny hands as the television cameras rolled.
For several days, the parents had to be content with short hand-written notes from their children and did not know whether their potentially infectious child had got out or not.
The coach, Ekapol Chanthawong, also wrote to the parents, apologising for the mess the kids had got into, or rather, he had got them into.
Internationally, he is being described as a hero, which puzzles me. Had I led a soccer team into a tunnel deep underground during the rainy season, trapping them for weeks, I am not sure that I would be regarded so favourably.
While the rescue was still under way, the slightly odd tech billionaire Elon Musk launched himself into the media, helpfully sending a “kid-sized submarine” to save them or suggesting they use an “inflatable tube with airlocks”.
Strangely, his suggestions were disregarded by the authorities.
We would have seen Donald Trump wriggling his fat butt into the cave to clasp each kid.