‘It was one of the most intense periods of my life’
Welsh caver Gary Mitchell on his part in the Thailand cave rescue:
WELSH cavers who helped rescue a junior football team from caves in Thailand earlier this year have spoken about the life-saving mission. One said thoughts of his six-year-old son, himself a keen footballer, added to the emotion of the most complicated cave rescue he has ever been involved in.
Members of the South and MidWales Cave Rescue Team (SMWRCT) played a vital role in the recovery of 12 boys and their coach in the depths of Thailand’s Tham Luang Nang Non cave in Chiang Rai Province this summer following a three-week ordeal that gripped the world.
With some of the most highly skilled cave rescuers in the world, the team was drafted in to support an international operation, including military personnel from Thailand, America, Australia and China. They ended up co-ordinating a treacherous mission which ultimately saw all members of the Wild Boars soccer team and their assistant coach reunited with their families.
The drama unfolded in July when the group of young boys and their coach were exploring caves when monsoon rains caused the passageways to flood, trapping them inside with little food or light for nine days. SMWCRT senior team leader Gary Mitchell, 43, from Llwynygog, near Staylittle, Powys, said he was at work in his role as Wales manager for charity Social Farms & Gardens when he received a call asking whether he could be on the next flight to Thailand.
The father of two, who has more than 30 years’ caving experience and has been a member of the SMWCRT for the past 15, was on a plane heading to the scene next morning after discussing the mission with his partner and rearranging work commitments.
Gary, who has a son aged six and a girl aged two, said they were in his mind as he worked to rescue the young footballers. Gary, who is also assistant chairman of the British Cave Rescue Council, said: “It was massively more complicated than anything I’ve ever done before. They were 2.5km below ground and almost 1km of that was completely flooded, there were 13 people to rescue and all non-divers.
“All of these factors made for the most extraordinary cave rescue which will probably – and hopefully – ever take place.
“There were huge elements of risk to the divers’ safety. When you add to that the fact you’re also completely responsible for a casualty the risk increases tenfold,” said Gary, who was in Thailand for a week.
“It was one of the most intense periods of my life. It was emotionally draining to go through it, but at the point that it all looked massively in our favour we felt a huge sense of relief.
“You’re trying to save a whole football team, my six-year-old son is a keen footballer so you have all the personal emotion of that as well. It was really quite surreal at times.”
The operation was hampered by the fact the team couldn’t physically get many people underground to where the boys and their coach were trapped.
Also with zero visibility and space restrictions to contend with, pinpointing their exact location was also very difficult, and this ruled out any drilling attempts from the surface, he recalled.
The perils of their mission were emphasised by the death of an experienced former Thai navy diver who was part of the original team trying to supply the stranded casualties with oxygen tanks.
“Every option we considered carried a huge risk. Our options were running out and we knew the boys could not be left to wait until the end of the monsoon season. The decision was taken to try and get these boys out while we had a short window of opportunities. There were certainly no guarantees.”
A team of 10 divers and surface support specialists from the UK, including fellow SMWRCT member John Volanthen and support diver Joshua Bratchley, 27, from Malltraeth, Anglesey, were sent out to help, while those remaining in Wales gathered vital equipment including special face masks, which were used for the young footballers.
The world looked on as the boys were rescued one by one, with each mission taking three to four hours. They wore full-face breathing masks and were connected to a rescue diver for the underwater sections, while the divers were guided by dive lines.
Four boys were rescued on the first day, followed by four on the second, and on the third rescue day the four boys and their coach were brought out. The four Thai Navy Seals who had been supporting the boys from the early days of the mission also returned safely on that final day, assisted by the UK divers and a team of support divers from Europe.
Dan Thorne, chairman of SMWCRT and an outdoor education tutor for Oxfordshire Outdoors in south Wales, remained in the UK to gather equipment for the operation and respond to the many media inquiries the team received.
“I’m very proud of the team’s hard work and dedication over all the years, and immensely proud of the near-impossible achievements in Thailand of our team members and those from the wider caving community who pulled out all the stops,” said the 43-year-old, who lives in Crickhowell and is the SMWCRT’s rescue warden for the local area.
The SMWRCT, formed in 1946, is one of the oldest voluntary rescue teams in the UK, with some of the world’s longest cave networks on its patch.
Its main rescue base is attached to South Wales’ Caving Club’s base at Penwyllt and the team has a furtherforward rescue base above Llangattock, near Crickhowell, as well as a store of equipment in mid Wales.
The team, which consists entirely of volunteers and receives no central funding, helps police in the search and rescue of people and animals underground and covers more than half of Wales, with a core team of 10 wardens and 19 executive members, as well as a wider membership of some 150 rescuers. The team has been involved in a number of highprofile searches and rescues, including the Gleision Colliery disaster and the search for missing schoolgirl April Jones, in Machynlleth.
The cavers received a special Platinum Award at this year’s Wales Care Awards in honour of their heroics, and were given a standing ovation as it was presented by Wrexham AM Lesley Griffiths.
Gary and Dan received the award on behalf of the team at a ceremony in Cardiff.