But soon after 7 pm, the first ambulance was heard racing towards the hospital.
Later, a rescue helicopter would pass over, headed towards the hospital with another Boar on board.
And then word came through that the third and fourth boys had also been saved. The Thai Navy SEALs’ Facebook page, which had been a regular source of information during the weeks the boys had been in the cave, announced: ‘Fourth Wild Boar is out at 7.47 pm.’ It would eventually emerge that the first three Boars had come out at 5.40 pm, 5.50 pm and 7.30 pm, respectively, but it was only later that their identities—Note, Tle, Nick and Night—would become well known.
Cheers rang out over Thailand.
The parents of the boys were overjoyed, but they didn’t yet know which boys had been saved. Some local news outlets began reporting that 13-year-old Mongkol ‘Mark’ Boonpiam was the first boy out of the cave. He was originally supposed to be one of the six boys rescued on day 1 but, in the end, Mark—one of the smaller boys—was forced to wait until day 3, when he was the last of the Boars to come out of Tham Luang cave.
As 8.30 pm approached, some news outlets—including the usually reliable Reuters—were reporting that the fifth and sixth boars had been freed. The fog of breaking news had descended and, in the scramble for information, some mistakes had been made. ‘Four’ was the magic number on day 1, and corrections would have to be released.
Just after 9 pm, Narongsak fronted the media in the car park of the Pong Pha Sub District Administration Office. It was a decidedly mundane setting in which to announce some extraordinary news. Although the rescue chief had been out by three hours in predicting when the boys might emerge, he was precise as he announced the details of the first, successful mission.
‘We have sent four of them to the hospital, all safe,’ he began. ‘What’s the next plan? We will get ready and make sure that everything is 100 per cent because all of the oxygen tanks and equipment have to be re-filled.’
One of the boys—most likely the one whom Richard Harris had monitored for 30 minutes before his dive began—was not in fantastic condition. But overall, Narongsak said, ‘Today’s operation is more successful than we expected.’
Ninety divers from around the world, including 40 Thais and 50 international divers, had contributed to the rescue on day 1. In all, thousands of people had contributed to the overall success of the mission.
The next operation would begin in ten to twenty hours—but Narongsak wouldn’t say much more than that. He didn’t even say which of the boys had been saved. Thai authorities were doing their best to keep firm control of the release of any information about the rescue mission.
Day 2 of the rescue began without any media fanfare. The supply of oxygen and air cylinders had been replenished overnight, the equipment had all been checked and the plan was set. So they just did it.
Just after 11 am on Monday morning, 9 July—an hour later than on the first day—thirteen divers re-entered the cave and began the second rescue mission. The teams again left in pairs, about twenty minutes apart, with Craig Challen as Richard Harris’s dive buddy. John Volanthen, Rick Stanton, Chris Jewell, Jason Mallinson and Harris reached the boys at Nern Nom Sao. Once again, Challen was stationed in chamber 8, alongside Claus Rasmussen and Mikko Paasi. But the line-up of the rest of the main dive team had changed slightly, as Ivan Karadzic, the Danish diver, had pulled out due to illness. So in chamber 6 Erik Brown was joined by Jim Warny, who had been in chamber 5 on day 1 of the rescue. In chamber 5, Connor Roe was joined by Josh Bratchley, another member of the British Cave Rescue Council who had joined the rescue mission.
The ‘dive out’ order was the same as day one—Mallinson would go first, followed by Volanthen, Jewell and Stanton. Each man would bring out one Boar.
The four boys who would come out on Monday were 13-year-old Panumas ‘Mick’ Sangdee, 14-year-old team captain Duganpet ‘Dom’ Promtep, 14-year-old Ekarat ‘Bew’ Wongsukchan and 14-year-old Adul Sam-on, the boy perhaps best known to the world due to that first, stuttering video when the team had been found by Stanton and Volanthen.
Despite the success of day 1, the rescuers were tense; just because the first day had gone smoothly, it did not mean that day 2 would be easier, or even as successful. They were also beginning to feel the effects of the previous day’s operation, especially the cumulative effects of so many dives in difficult conditions in such a short space of time. They were burning kilojoules like crazy as their bodies ate up energy. This made the assistance they were given by the SEALs, the US and the Australian teams, who carried heavy equipment such as their oxygen cylinders, invaluable.
Of course, after the 100 per cent success rate on day 1, everyone’s expectations had soared. But the conditions in the cave were still treacherous; they still had to negotiate the same tunnels and stretches of murky, underwater passages, and face the same risks posed by the accidental dislodging of a face mask. Nothing about the mission had become easier. As Brown put it, ‘Just because we got four out on day 1, didn’t mean everything would work on day 2. Day 2 was equally as dangerous, on day 2 we could go zero from four [rescued]. The hardest part was there was no playbook for this.’
For Jewell, the sense of elation at the end of day 1 was quickly replaced by a sense of foreboding: ‘There was a sense of euphoria mixed very heavily with a sense that we would have to do this again, not just once, but twice more. We would have to go through [the] entire stressful process, from start to finish, on at least two more occasions. And the diving wasn’t going to get any easier.’1
The fact that the plan had worked on day 1, at least, gave the divers some confidence that they could do it again. In addition, the pumps were still working, preventing the water levels from rising as more rain passed over Doi Nang Non mountain and flowed into Tham Luang cave. And early, unofficial reports from the hospital indicated that, while a couple of the boys had minor ailments, on the whole they were recovering well.
In the days ahead, the boys would play with Lego, playdough and spend time drawing in the hospital, under the watchful eyes of doctors and psychologists.
One of the major shocks the boys would confront, which could have potentially had a significant psychological impact on them, was the death of Saman Gunan. The team learnt of this just a couple of days before they left the cave. They were shocked and saddened that someone had died trying to rescue them.
The whole operation, overseen by the Thai military and with a prominent contribution from the US military personnel on site, was being run in a regimented fashion, which not only suited the disposition of the military types in charge but also helped minimise the risk of misunderstandings and mishaps. Limiting the variables just made sense, and only essential changes were made to the rescue procedure. After all, it was impossible to impose order on either the cave or the weather. Brown, typically self-deprecating, plays down his role in chamber 6 during the rescue mission: ‘The UK divers were always in charge and our job was to always support them, “yes sir, no sir”, that sort of thing. We had to facilitate whatever they needed.’
By the time they reached chamber 6, the kids were usually okay and their oxygen tanks didn’t need changing. But the waypoint did allow the Brits to change over their own cylinders and have a brief respite as two extra sets of hands offered to help pull the boys through.
‘Sometimes they would come through and everyone would be fine and no help was needed. Sometimes we would change [a] kid’s tanks. There wasn’t a routine. It really depended on the situation on day to day, from child to child,’ says Brown.
The UK divers were changing tanks more regularly than the boys, because of the amount of effort required to dive themselves out, while also dragging, steering and guiding the boys through the cave. But fewer tanks were used by the divers on day 2, as they became more accustomed to the job at hand.
Towards the end of day 2, after Stanton had come through with the fourth Boar, Harris and Challen appeared. On each of the three rescue days, a
bout fifteen minutes after the last boy was taken from chamber 9, they would dive through to chamber 6 together and pop their heads up to say hello.
But this time it was slightly different. In the middle of one of the most daring rescue missions the world had ever seen, Brown and Harris shared a moment that was extraordinary for its ordinariness. Brown was just sitting in chamber 6, taking it all in, considering the enormity of the whole mission and the role he, personally, was playing. He was also contemplating the dive back to chamber 3 that lay ahead of him: ‘I was sitting there [for] ten minutes on day 2.’ Then Harris appeared through the darkness from the direction of Nern Nom Sao, on his way out for the night.
‘He asked where I was from. I said I was from Canada.’ The pair spoke for a few minutes, with Harris asking how the boys were when they had come through chamber 6.
‘Four for four,’ replied Brown.
‘Far out.’
‘It was one of those weird moments, a two-minute conversation a mile and a half inside a cave in Thailand,’ Brown laughs, struggling to describe what had remained unsaid between the two men in those precious minutes at the end of the second rescue day. ‘Dr Harris is an amazing man.’
Then Brown cleared his station, grabbed the empty tanks and started the long dive back. It would be two or three hours before he would know if the day’s mission had succeeded. And the four remaining boys and coach Ek would have to spend one more night in the cave.
Ever careful to control what the media knew, the Thai authorities didn’t breathe a word about rescue day 2 until 3 pm, when Narongsak called the media to another briefing. In essence, the rescue plan was unchanged, he said, and they hoped to repeat the success of day 1. The conditions were as good as they had been on the previous day, and in four to five hours they would know if day 2 had been a success.
The water levels inside the cave were stable, with the pumps still working 24 hours a day to keep water flowing out of Tham Luang and into the nearby fields. Although the downpour the previous afternoon had tested the setup, there was no cause for concern—at least not yet.
The first four boys, meanwhile, had not yet seen their parents; after seventeen days their first, emotional reunion would have to be delayed by a day while the boys underwent exhaustive medical checks. If the results were all positive, then the parents would be able to visit their sons for the first time—although they would have to communicate with them through a wall of glass, as the boys were all in an isolation ward to guard against infection. They had asked, Narongsak added, for Pad Krapow Kai, a spicy Thai stir-fry chicken dish with sweet basil.
Maddeningly, Narongsak still wouldn’t confirm which of the boys had come out on day 1. And with that, the briefing was over and the wait for more news from inside Tham Luang cave continued.
Right across the world—from millionaire footballers competing in Russia’s World Cup to Australians gathered around their television sets—the rescue had captivated people’s attention. The rescue mission cut across cultural boundaries and language barriers, and introduced the majority of the world to the dangerous complexities of caving and cave-diving.
There was something primal and inspiring about rescuers from more than a dozen different nations uniting to try to defeat Mother Nature and save the lives of twelve young boys and their coach from deep inside a dark, deserted cave. Anyone could relate to the basic contours of the story, and just about everyone—at some point in their life—had been afraid of the dark.
In the end, the wait for more news on that Monday afternoon ended sooner than expected. Just before 5 pm, a fifth member of the Wild Boars was seen emerging from the entrance of the cave on a stretcher. Then at 5.15 pm, an ambulance was spotted leaving the cave and heading towards a helicopter that was on standby. A few minutes later the chopper roared away from Mae Sai on its way to Chiang Rai Hospital.
But still no one had confirmed whether the first Boar who had come out was dead or alive. And there was no way to confirm it, given the tight clamp on the dissemination of information. In any event, less than an hour later a sixth boar was seen being treated at the field hospital outside the cave. Boars 7 and 8 followed soon afterwards, with each undergoing a medical check inside the cave, and then again at the field hospital, before being rushed to hospital.
Between 4.45 pm and 7 pm the four boys had emerged—and despite the rescue operation starting an hour later than the day before, it had been completed an hour earlier.
The Thai Navy SEALs, in their trademark style, again marked the moment on their Facebook page: ‘Eight Boars in two days. Hooyah!’ That trademark cheer, ‘Hooyah!’, had been heard time and time again around the operation centre outside the cave entrance as the SEALs drilled and prepared for what lay ahead.
Later Narongsak—with a satisfied expression on his face—would begin on a high note as he confirmed the news that was now widely known. ‘Today we saved four more. The team is getting used to the operation. In the cave we have more than a hundred staff … for guide ropes, to fill tanks and 18 divers to get the kids.’
Throwing another feint to the media, and to the watching world, Narongsak suggested that on Tuesday only another four Boars—the optimum number for the operation—might come out. It didn’t ring true; the idea that just one member of the team would be left in the cave—even if it was Ek with Dr Pak and the three brave Thai SEALs who were approaching their ninth day inside—was laughable. His comments seemed to underscore the fact that it was the divers running the rescue plan, not the Thais; Narongsak simply didn’t know it yet.
Sitting alongside Narongsak was the deputy commander of the Third Thai Army, Major General Chalongchai Chaiyakham, grinning like the Cheshire Cat as he described how the rescue plan had been ‘adapted’ and ‘sharpened’ in the past 24 hours. The number of divers involved in the operation—the great bulk of whom, of course, were in chambers 1 to 3—had grown to more than a hundred on the second day.
‘I expect tomorrow will be good news,’ Chalongchai said.
But as the second extraordinary rescue day drew to a close, four Boars and their coach remained in the cave that night. Although they had Dr Pak and the SEALs for company, it must have been a very lonely night. By now they knew the four boys from the first day’s rescue had made it out safely. But the fate of the second four was still unknown, and they couldn’t be sure that the five of them would all make it out safely on the third and final day.
If anything, the result on day 2 was even more extraordinary. The British divers had done it again and saved another four members of the football team, completing the day’s rescues in less time than the day before. But could they finish the job with no casualties?
That question would be answered on day 3 of the rescues—Tuesday, 10 July.
In the early hours of 10 July, Elon Musk again attempted to insert himself into the story of the Wild Boars. The tech billionaire announced he had just returned from a visit to the cave. ‘Mini-sub is ready if needed. It is made of rocket parts & named Wild Boar after kids’ soccer team. Leaving here in case it may be useful in the future. Thailand is so beautiful,’ he tweeted.
But in the weeks ahead the billionaire would become increasingly defensive over his ‘contribution’ to the rescue effort. Responding to a tweet from BBC World News, Musk said it was inaccurate to describe Narongsak as the ‘rescue chief’, and released copies of emails between himself and Richard Stanton that indicated the British diver had encouraged him to keep working on the submarine. ‘We’re worried about the smallest lad please keep working on the capsule details,’ Stanton had written. Moreover, ‘based on extensive cave video review & discussion with several divers who know journey, SpaceX engineering is absolutely certain that mini-sub can do entire journey,’ Musk added.
Things went downhill from there.
Vern Unsworth, whose extensive knowledge of the cave was a vital component of the cave rescue, criticised Musk’s submarine as a PR stunt that had ‘absolutely no chance of working’ because it co
uldn’t navigate the tight passageways of Tham Luang cave. The billionaire, he added, had been asked to leave very quickly after turning up at the cave.
Musk’s subsequent derisive comments about Unsworth were not well received. His contribution, while seen as well-meaning, was also regarded by some observers as a crude attempt to garner some publicity.
Either way, it was a sideshow.
Early on Tuesday, 10 July, fog and clouds hung over Doi Nang Non, and it rained incessantly. It wasn’t at all clear how much longer the pumps could keep working to hold back the tide. Time was clearly running out for the rescuers. Surely today was the day the final five would come out. Although the rescuers were exhausted, they could now see the finish line. But while preparations were underway for the third and final rescue push, the health of the first eight boys rescued still remained a mystery, and more and more questions were being asked about their condition. None of the families had enjoyed direct contact with their sons yet, and it wasn’t even clear if they knew which of the eight boys had been brought out safely.
Narongsak Osatanakorn had initially claimed that the rescued boys were not being named out of respect for the families of the five boys still in the cave. Again, it was a claim that defied belief. At least some of the divers did not know the names of the boys they were bringing out on day 1, and the boys were too sedated to tell them. The boys’ nicknames were subsequently written on their hands on days 2 and 3. Nearly 48 hours after the first boys had been rescued some of the parents started to complain publicly about the lack of information from authorities. Somboon Sompiangjai, Night’s father, had complained that, before the first rescue on Sunday, the parents had been told only that the ‘strongest children’ would come out first.2 Since then, the information vacuum had continued. ‘We have not been told which child has been brought out,’ he said. ‘We can’t visit our boys in hospital because they need to be monitored for 48 hours.’
The Great Cave Rescue Page 13