At key decision points, when emotions were running high and the pressure was growing on the Thai leaders of the rescue effort to do something, to just act now, it was men like Hodges and Anderson who would try to remain rational and logical as they made life-or-death decisions.
While water pumps began to arrive on site and search teams worked overhead, hoisting heavy drills up the mountain and searching through the dense tropical forest for natural chimneys that might lead them to the boys, the most obvious route out—and the most dangerous—was right in front of the rescue teams. The dark, flooded entrance of Tham Luang cave beckoned, threatening death but also promising the possibility of salvation.
But the Americans were not the only international team on site, helping the Thais. On 29 June, six Chinese divers from the Beijing Peaceland Foundation joined the rescue effort. Like the Americans, they brought with them diving equipment as well as an underwater robot and a three-dimensional imaging device. The next day they were joined by a private Chinese group called the Green Boat Emergency team, which specialises in cave and mountain search and rescue, a team of six divers from the Australian Federal Police’s Specialist Response Group, and a diver from the Australian Navy.
The Australian government had contacted the Thais and offered to send help—which in this case meant some expert rescue divers. The offer was taken up with alacrity by the Thai government.
Eventually at least twenty nations would contribute manpower and expertise, in the form of either private volunteers or government teams, to the rescue effort. These included search and rescue workers from neighbouring Laos, communications specialists from Israel, engineers from Japan, and drainage specialists from Holland.
It took some time for all these specialist skills to be utilised properly, given the level of disorganisation in the early days of the rescue effort, but over time each team made its own contribution.
Some of the most significant contributions came from volunteer private divers—who came to be nicknamed the Euro divers—such as Finn Mikko Paasi, Belgian Ben Reymenants, Danes Ivan Karadzic and Claus Rasmussen, and Canadian Erik Brown, all of whom spend at least part of the year living and working in Thailand, and most of whom would remain at the cave until the very end. Karadzic, with his laconic style, matter of fact manner and penchant for the occasional cigarette, would become a familiar face around the main operation centre. Unlike most of the divers, he would happily chat to journalists desperate for a skerrick of information and, charmingly, give away nothing of any consequence while still managing to leave his inquisitors feeling wiser.
And then of course there were the Brits. Unsworth, an expert on Tham Luang, had been the first to arrive on 24 June, along with Mr Lak, his friend and fellow spelunker. Three days later, on 27 June, the British Cave Rescue Council had sent out expert cave divers Volanthen and Stanton, with caver Harper to assist. But the British crew didn’t stop there—Chris Jewell and Jason Mallinson, world-renowned cave rescue divers in their own right, would arrive on 5 July.
A surface support team that included Martin Ellis, one of the godfathers of Thai cave exploration and mapping; Mike Clayton, who coordinated equipment needs; and Gary Mitchell, who coordinated communications, would join the rescue on 6 July. And two days later, rescue divers Jim Warny, Connor Roe and Josh Bratchley would arrive. Warny and Roe would be in the water, up at chamber 5, from the day they arrived, and Bratchley would follow them in the next day.
Back in the UK, Bill Whitehouse, the BCRC vice chair, and Emma Porter, the BCRC secretary, also played an invaluable role, sending out people and kit, and fielding a huge number of media inquiries as the story grew bigger and bigger.
Like the Euro divers, the Americans, the Chinese and the Australians, the Brits brought with them hundreds of kilograms of equipment—everything from specialised diving rebreathers and oxygen and air cylinders to side-mounted tanks, wetsuits, helmets, ropes and dive masks. They even brought HeyPhone sets, a relatively obscure radio system used by cave divers in the UK since 2001. Although outdated, the HeyPhone is still used by cavers and even built by the enthusiastic DIYers as it enables communication through thick rock.
In hindsight, it’s easy to see that each team and each individual played their part to perfection, carefully maintaining a deferential attitude towards the Thai control of the overall operation while also contributing their unique skills.
When it was all over, more than 10,000 people—including 2000 soldiers and 200 divers—had in some way helped with the rescue.
But on 29 and 30 June, there was still no sign of the boys, and the path into the cave remained flooded.
Outside the cave, the rescue teams were exploring every possibility to try to find a way through to the boys. Three main options were on the table—pumping out the water, to make it easier for the divers to get in and search for the boys; scaling Doi Nang Non, with the hope of finding a shaft that might allow a rescue team to be lowered down to the Boars, who could then be winched up; or finding a shaft that would reach part of the way through to the boys, then drilling through the remaining hundreds of metres of rock into the cavern.
On Tuesday, 26 June, the rapidly expanding group of rescuers decided to utilise water pumps. The still-rising waters were making it harder and harder for the divers to reach even as far as chamber 3—by 28 June, the water had flooded to within 200 metres of the entrance of chamber 1—and there was the ever-present threat of more rain.
Thai Navy SEALs Captain, Anan Surawan,2 who led the initial team of twenty sent to the cave, immediately recognised the dangers facing his men. From the early hours of that Monday morning, when the SEALS first went in and the water levels started to rise, he was concerned his divers were working in unsafe conditions. The water levels were unpredictable, at best, and he made the call: for his men to get further into that cave—let alone successfully rescue the boys—they would have to pump out the water.
So the first pumps arrived on 26 June. Tuesday’s task was meant to be getting the pumps into chamber 3—but there was another problem. Some of the equipment was damaged as it was brought into the cave, and would not work, so a call went out for more pumps, and more manpower. And then chamber 3 flooded.
The problems didn’t stop there. Both the SEALs and the Brits would need to come up for air as they attempted to dive through the deeper sections of the cave. They also needed dry ground, ideally, so they could check and change over their equipment, such as face masks and air cylinders. But the pumps they had, even if they were undamaged, just weren’t powerful enough to expel enough water.
On 30 June, a Thai man named Panom Cheunpiron drove 900 kilometres from the Samut Sakorn Province near Bangkok, where he is based, to deliver three massive water pumps to the Tham Luang cave. ‘The government’s pumps were too small,’ Panom, who owns a water pump supply business called Pop Soop Nam Sing, later recalled.3
Hundreds of kilometres away, like so many Thais, Panom had watched the frantic scenes at the cave on television—the devastated parents, the rescuers grappling with nature—and he decided he could do something for those kids trapped in the cave. So Panom loaded his pumps onto a truck, drove north, and installed them on the east side of the mountain. Once these pumps were up and running, they began shooting a million litres of water per hour out of the cave, flooding 2000 square kilometres of rice paddies owned by over a hundred farmers.
But the logistics of laying the pipes even some way into the cave and running them to the outside so they could start emptying the cave of water, were mind-boggling. It was desperate, sodden work, hand over hand, through dirt and mud, in the dark. High-powered electrical cables had to be laid in the driving rain and in sodden passages, and the rescue teams were always desperate for more men inside the cave.
At the same time, a huge team of more than a hundred men—led by the National Parks Department but including SEALs, police and volunteer ‘bird’s nest collectors’ from the distant south of Thailand—began scouring the mountain top f
or a shaft that could lead down to the boys and their coach. Geologists were also brought in by the Thai government to figure out how water was getting in and out of the cave system. In the days ahead, makeshift plugs would be used to block holes in the roof of the mountain, reducing the flow of water into the cave. Each of these teams would hike more than 15 kilometres a day through the thick Thai forest, in temperatures above 30°C and in high humidity, in their search for shafts and holes.
The US contingent also participated in the search for another way into the cave, as they were keenly aware that the riskiest option of all might be diving and swimming the boys out. At every step the fate of the boys hung heavily on their shoulders. But the exploration of those shafts, each a potential way down into the mountain and through to the Boars, was a dangerous and difficult task. Each narrow shaft—one was as much as 600 metres deep—had to be carefully explored, and one careless or hasty inspection could mean the difference between success and the boys being lost forever.
Tethered to a rope, a volunteer would clamber down—or, in some instances, be lowered down—into a narrow, craggy shaft, seeking a way through to the boys and a path to freedom. One misstep and he could be trapped, or crack his head on a rock, and another rescue mission would be underway. The search teams that trekked over the top of the mountain, both to reach possible chimneys that could lead down to the boys, and to find possible new routes, worked long days that often stretched beyond twelve hours under the hot sun. It was difficult work, with scratches, bruises and bumps a daily occurrence, not to mention sore muscles. At this early stage, the rescuers judged that winching the boys out to freedom through one of these shafts—if one could be found—was preferable to the almost unthinkable—getting the boys out through the flooded cave system.
The bird’s nest collectors, from the southern Thai island of Koh Libong in Trang Province, have special talents that were welcomed by the rescue teams climbing over the top of Doi Nang Non. They were another example of the selfless way in which Thais pulled together to help rescue the stranded boys.
For generations, the bird’s nest collectors have climbed sheer limestone cliffs in search of edible birds’ nests, a delicacy made from solidified bird spit, which they then sell for a handsome profit. Depending on the quality of the nests, which are used in soups and other dishes, they can be sold for between 10,000 and 30,000 baht4 per kilo—a handsome bounty in a poor part of rural Thailand.5 Those nests are collected three times a year, in February, April and July–August.6
But this mission to Tham Luang had nothing to do with profit; it was entirely altruistic. Like Thais all over the country, the team of eighteen nest collectors had heard about the missing Wild Boars, and quickly realised their climbing skills might help find a way through to them. So after passing the hat around local villages on their island, 2000 kilometres south of Mae Sai, they flew north to offer their help to the teams working on top of the mountain, more than 1000 metres above ground level.
Wearing gloves and working with basic ropes, the team took to the mountain with ease. Guided by the locals, they used their specialist skills to hunt for airshafts, clambering up to points that others couldn’t reach. They would work twelve hours a day, find perhaps two or three promising holes that could be explored, and report their findings to the operation centre. There the holes would be logged, marked on a map and assessed as a possibly promising opening to be examined the next day.
At barely 1.5 metres tall, with gnarled hands and feet and a couple of decades of experience as a bird’s nest collector, Maann Thonglao is a typical member of the team who had flown to Mae Sai. Why did people like Maann get involved in such an unlikely rescue, so far from home?
‘We want to help the kids, we saw the news, they have been trapped for too many days,’ he told one reporter.
And while the small team of bird’s nest collectors as well as much larger teams of forest park rangers and SEALs combed the roof of the mountain, looking for a way through, drilling machines still seemed like the best option available; surely, somewhere, amid all the cracks and crevices that dotted the top of Doi Nang Non, an opening would be found and a drilling crew could finish the job.
Thai authorities were initially confident that they knew where the boys would be, on higher ground within the cave. Their infrared cameras would guide their drills down through rocky chimneys and lead them to the trapped boys. But dragging those drills up onto the dangerous ridges of the mountain—often by hand, as there are no roads—proved to be a far more difficult task. And the authorities didn’t really know where the boys were, or at least not yet, so there was a fair bit of guesswork and a dash of bravado attached to this plan. However, money was no object, and in the end more than a hundred holes would be drilled down into the mountain. More than a hundred people were involved in this dangerous and difficult search for a way through to the Boars. All that mattered was rescuing them—just volunteer, put a shoulder to the wheel and have a go.
It was a sentiment that would be repeated over and over again, from the volunteers handing out hot meals to the pump owner driving 900 kilometres to offer some equipment. The fate of the boys, unknown and unknowable for so many days, trapped in the dark, had gripped their nation, and the world. So the teams pushed forward, day after day, despite the tremendous odds, without success.
For all those good intentions, in that first week the reality of the hunt for a shaft through to the boys was just this: The rain was unrelenting. The boys were under more than a kilometre of rock—from the peak of the mountain down to their location in Nern Nom Sao. Finding a shaft that would lead all the way through to them was a dangerous task, dependent on a large element of luck. And all the while, as the search overhead took place, an unspoken reality hovered in the minds of these hardworking rescue workers and their colleagues down at ground level, in and outside the cave: there was no guarantee the boys were even alive. They could all be involved in a tragic recovery operation.
John Volanthen and Rick Stanton were frustrated. The conditions inside the cave were still dreadful, there was no sign of the boys, and although the rain had begun to ease off on 29 and 30 June, they hadn’t been diving for two days. For these two men as well as all the other divers, sitting, waiting and planning while more and more pumps were brought to the site was no substitute for getting back into the dark of Tham Luang.
An attempt had been made by the SEALs on 30 June to get beyond chamber 3—which days earlier had been the main operating base, before the deluge and the floods began in earnest—but it had failed. The British pair had been forced to cool their heels.
That all changed on Sunday, 1 July, when the pair finally got back in the water and started diving. Volanthen and Stanton, two of the world’s best cave divers, were in their element, and their progress that day was nothing short of extraordinary. They were path-finding again, helping to lay guide ropes, diving through sumps, battling the currents in filthy floodwater that obscured their vision and hampered their progress. Not content with reaching chamber 3, they powered on. About another 150 metres of dangerously tricky diving and slogging led them to what would become known as chamber 4. A further 150-metre dive led to a canal and chamber 5. From there they advanced a further 300 metres, diving through sumps, wading waist deep through another canal, through chamber 6 and finally to Sam Yaek—the T-junction. The Thai Navy SEALs had been here a week before, as the second day of the rescue operation dawned. but since then the rains and consequent flooding had prevented anyone from returning. To ensure that wouldn’t happen again, the British divers were laying cable, carefully attaching it to the walls of the cave, metre after careful metre. They would find a path, come what may—even if it became a retrieval operation rather than a rescue.
It’s difficult to overstate just how difficult this dive was for Stanton and Volanthen. Abandoned guide ropes and other debris cluttered their path. Visibility in the water was very low, down to just a few centimetres in places. Over time the soupy, muddy water even
tually seeps through your wetsuit and chills you to the bone.
In the cold and dark of a cave, fear and panic are mortal enemies. A lost rope, a dropped torch or mouthpiece, or even a faulty dive watch can waste precious minutes as gear and location are sorted, checked and re-checked. And unlike a deep ocean dive, there is no direct route to the surface—no winking sun, however faint, to serve as a reminder that escape is possible. There is only the darkness, and your dive buddy, somewhere nearby.
Though the global cave-diving community is comparatively small, other divers, including British, Europeans and the Australians Richard Harris and Craig Challen, were capable of undertaking the diving required in Tham Luang.
If they weren’t already on site, these men would arrive in the next few days. And of course there were experienced cave divers not in Thailand who could have done the job, too.
But the point with Stanton and Volanthen was this: they were two of the best-qualified people in the world to undertake the dives required to find the Boars, and to lead the rescue. And temperamentally, they were up for the challenge—both men are veterans of high-risk rescues, salvage operations and record-breaking dives in some of the most remote caves on the planet.
But that didn’t mean this dive was a routine one for the best in the world. They left nothing to chance; didn’t believe in luck. Although Volanthen and Stanton had conferred at length with the Thais and people like Unsworth who knew every crevice, passage and cavern in Tham Luang, and had consulted expert maps drawn by people like Ellis, all of this information was in a sense abstract, compiled by cave explorers, not divers. The obstacles confronted by an explorer on foot vary considerably from those encountered by a caver swimming, diving and twisting through the same canals—for example, stalactites that wouldn’t bother a hiker much could present a dangerous challenge to a diver.
The Great Cave Rescue Page 6