The five villagers found alive in a partially flooded cave in Xaysomboun province in Laos are all now reported to have been extracted by specialist cave-divers.
The successful operation followed what was effectively a “trial run” yesterday (29 May), when members of the international cave-rescue team helped the first of the trapped men effectively to scuba dive for 10 minutes through a zero-visibility underwater passage. The entire extraction had taken 37 minutes.
The Thailand Rescue Diver group reported that the last of the five trapped villagers was brought out at 3.10pm local time today. It later emerged that continuing water-pumping operations had finally succeeded in creating airspaces that had enabled the four men to make their own way out without further need of scuba.
The men, who had entered the abandoned mine on 20 May in search of gold ore, had been found in a ventilated chamber elevated above floodwater a week later. The rescue divers had brought them food, water and blankets while a plan was formulated for their extraction.
Cave-diving specialists Finnish-born Mikko Paasi and Thai Norrased Palasing, veterans of the 2018 Tham Luang rescue in Thailand, had arrived on 25 May as reported on Divernet and, after finding the chamber, had been instrumental in conducting the extraction operation.
The chamber lay about 300m from the cave entrance, with access via narrow, hard-to-navigate passages containing sharp rocks and collapse hazards, and one particularly problematic submerged length of muddy water. There had been fears of further rai and flooding on the way.
The first run
The first of the men had been brought out at 8.37pm yesterday. Paasi told CBS News that using scuba to negotiate the flooded section had been a last option, because of the high risk to both the villagers and to the rescuers themselves. In the challenging conditions any panic or uncertainty could have proved fatal.
Paasi and Palasing had effectively “sandwiched” the man, he said, tethering him equipped with a regulator between them. In the submerged section he had effectively been required to scuba-dive for his first time in zero visibility. Getting through that 10-minute section had been what Paasi described as a “trust-me dive”.
“I got him through the restrictions and everything, and he’s healthy and he’s alive,” he said. “It’s not a nice place to dive. The guy was super-strong.” He added that there had been many “moving parts that can go wrong”.
Eight people had originally entered the cave, and one had managed to escape and alert the Lao authorities after heavy rainwater carrying sand and gravel had rushed into the system, blocking his companions’ exit.
According to official reports, efforts to locate two other miners who had not made it to the ventilated chamber are continuing, although Paasi told CBS that they were no longer believed to be alive, or had been trapped in spaces too small for divers to enter.
Other cave-divers and rescue experts arriving in recent days to supplement the initial rescue team included the Chado Udon team and Naruchit Kiatmaneesri from Thailand, Lee Kian Lee from Malaysia, Josh Richards from Australia, Robin Cuesta from France, Audita Harsono from Indonesia and Yoshitaka Isaji from Japan.
