Inside the Thailand Cave: The Obstacles Facing Rescuers
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Rescue divers have had to navigate flooded passages, with some openings as small as 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall, to rescue the trapped soccer team. Go here for live updates on the latest rescues.
Rescuers are bringing in supplies and equipment through the cave’s main entrance. The shape shown here is the cross section of the cave at the entrance.
The rescue team has its base here in Chamber 3, a dry area about a third of a mile from the entrance. They are trying to run a communications line from here to the trapped team.
Starting at about a half-mile from the entrance, the cave dramatically narrows.
This is the cross-section of the cave at about three-quarters of a mile from the entrance.
It was here at Sam Yaek junction that divers first found the tunnel that led to the soccer team.
While eight of the boys have been successfully evacuated so far, the rescuers face an increasingly dire situation . The boys have grown weak from falling oxygen levels in the chamber where they are trapped. One rescue diver died Friday when he ran out of air while underwater.
Officials are monitoring weather forecasts, with some expecting monsoon rains to arrive soon. The storms could slow the rescue effort and push water levels in the group’s chamber even higher. To help keep water levels down, a small dam has been built outside the cave.
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This article gives us a detailed perspective.
They should be able to get the rest of them out tonight.
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This is an amazing rescue operation and highly highly dangerous. Having done a fair amount of diving in my life. This type of diving is light years more difficult than open ocean diving. I have nothing but a very high level of respect for the rescuers. Amazing divers.
Hopefully they will have they all out tomorrow. Since there are 5 left, including the coach I wonder if they will try to get them all out at one time, or stop after 4 and resupply the oxygen stops.
I was wondering what the water temps are. If they are cool enough and the kids don't have wet suits the start of chills and then hypothermia causes one to use more oxygen. Another dangerous situation.
Anyhow, fingers crossed.
It's definitely not as attractive as diving in the Caribbean or off the coast of Belize. These days almost all of my diving is cave diving or other zero visibility conditions, like finding lost skis deep in the silt layer of a pond.
These cave divers deserve special credit for being able to keep the kids calm through what sounds like almost 2-1/2 hours total time underwater, particularly with the high flow rate and lack of visibility.
Actually some of the best diving that I've done has been in Fiji and the surrounding islands. I have fortunate that my work took me to some of the best dive spots in the world. Micronesia, South Pacific, Australia...
Wreck diving in Chuuk Lagoon was the experience of a lifetime.
On average at least several times a year since about 1980.
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Yep, those are called cenotes and they're very common in Florida, the Yucatan and several countries in Central America. Some are archaeological sites. The nice thing about them is that the water clarity is usually exceptional and if they're near the coast they sometimes lead to river sections where a halocline is visible, almost like a mirror with a blurry side. I absolutely love doing those and also the coastal subterranean rivers like Belize has, but unfortunately most of my cave diving is cold, muddy and has zero visibility.
Lucky dude! I always take my dry caving gear whenever I travel overseas so I've done a lot of caving in China, Turkey, Sicily, etc, but it's usually not been possible to take my scuba or cave diving gear (like side mount bottles), and most of my trips haven't even been to good OW scuba places. At this point I've easily done 10x as many technical dives of one sort or another than OW dives, and most of them have been crawling for thousands of feet through dry cave while hauling tanks before reaching the sump or whatever we're surveying. I'd just once like to do a trip like that with a support team where other people are hauling your gear for you!
Have you ever used a rebreather?
LOL, good luck with that.
A few times briefly and just in OW. One of my dive master buddies owns a scuba shop and has tested several early versions of the rebreathers Bill Stone developed, including a mixed gas closed circuit system and a small bottle-fed semi closed circuit version. They were all prototypes so they were too bulky and fussy for cave diving, and I felt like I was pulling on low air all the time. But that dive master and one of the guys I used to dive with both use modern commercial ones all the time for cave diving. One of the problems they both had was silting up the "exhale" filter (or valve) in muddy water so they have to be careful not to drop the regulator in the water, etc. I didn't have this problem but with some designs I think mask clearing would be a problem too.
Deep water scares me, but the idea of scuba diving in an uncharted cave is absolutely terrifying because you can't go up to the surface as a safety mechanism. You must have nerves of steel not to tense up in a sump.
Or just a very slow reaction time when I want it....I think I already told you my snapping turtle story. But the big thing is to just do everything slowly and controlled - breathing, ankle finning, everything. It's even more Zen than regular diving.
That's why I think the divers at Tham Luang have done such a great job training the kids to stay calm during the dive. I've had to deal with a few people having panic attacks during dry caving, either newbies or inexperienced cavers who got stuck, and I've found a few tricks which work to calm them down. But learning to dive has a much higher attrition rate and cave diving even more so - that's why cave diving instructors start with cavern diving and prefer that you've done night diving.
I guess in one sense these kids had it easy since everything which could go wrong already had gone wrong.
I love caving but then idea of sump diving is a special kind of crazy that I am not going to do. The book Beyond The Deep was terrifying for me to read but I loved it.
Don't want to totally derail Jasper's article but sometime the three of us have to post an article on some of our diving adventures. One of my best was off the Coral Coast of Fiji.
I don't mind derails that are informative, interesting, polite, and relate to the topic. I've enjoyed reading about everyone's caving and diving experiences.
Great comment.
Update: everyone has been rescued!
Outstanding!!!!!
When the World works together it is amazing what miracles can happen.