There was no other option; they had to somehow turn this 3.5-tonne air pump into a 3-tonne pump. So they began to take it apart, starting with the wheels – they wouldn’t be needed on the mountainside. Their wrenches tore off chunks like feeding sharks at a whale carcass. They desperately wanted to get all the equipment in place before dark. The helicopter could only fly during the day, and it was already late afternoon. Once the equipment was there, they could light up the area and work around the clock. But if they didn’t get the air pump up now, their whole operation would be delayed by twelve hours.
As the air pump was being stripped, they started getting the drilling rods in place. These also proved tricky, but for a different reason – they were too delicate to airlift. The ends of each rod had to connect perfectly, as any fault could twist the drill bit, with potentially dangerous consequences for those working on it. So these, they decided, would have to be carried by hand up the mountain. Each rod was about 1.5 metres long and weighed about twenty kilograms. One by one, the rods were placed across the shoulders of fit men – some soldiers, some volunteers – who marched off along the path and disappeared into the misty green jungle. They were given strict instructions not to put their heavy loads down until they reached the drill site.
Back at the helipad, the engineers finally had the pump down to the right weight. The helicopter took off carefully. The block-shaped air pump stayed stable and it too was carried to the drill site.
Soon after, the chopper returned. Suttisak and a member of Thailand’s special forces got in and were flown around the mountain to the west side. It was so close to the Myanmar border that when Suttisak waved to the border guards on the other side, they waved back. The chopper hovered over the drill site, careful not to stray into an international incident, as the two men checked their helmets and harnesses and climbed into an orange basket. Sitting with their knees to their chests, they were lowered down.
It was time to drill.
The arm of the drill machine was tilted to sixty-eight degrees, angling into what would look from afar like Princess Nang Non’s right cheek. The first rod was loaded into the machine and the power switched on. It roared into life, pulsing the drill rod back and forth. Knobs of hardened steel on the tip of the drill pulverised the limestone. The air pump forced the ground rock out. When the hole reached the length of the rod, the machines stopped while the drillers connected another rod.
Suttisak’s Plan B was underway.
A cloud of fine white dust crept eerily around the drillers, who turned their backs and covered their faces as best they could. It looked like a heavy mist, created not by clouds but from deep within the mountain itself.
* * *
That Sunday, I was home in Bangkok, enjoying playing through my beloved guitar collection. It was good to be back – cameraman David Leland and I had just spent four days filming elephants and interviews in Myanmar.
I hadn’t thought much about the cave story since filing that first voicer almost a week earlier. It was front-page news in Thailand, but I’d been away and busy. Later that day, my boss called to discuss the boys in the cave. He was keen for me to travel to Chiang Rai province. I called David to see if he was available. He was. The ABC’s office manager booked our flights there for the next morning, as well as a few days’ accommodation.
I headed downstairs to file a couple of voicers for Monday’s morning bulletins. There was some fresh news: the Australian contingent had just arrived.
I re-packed the video gear. We’d also be joined by ABC producer Supattra Vimonsuknopparat, aka Jum. Her role would be to arrange interviews and translate.
I threw a bag of still-unwashed clothes back in my suitcase and somewhat reluctantly put the guitars back on the rack.
Walking off the plane at Chiang Rai airport the next day, I noticed two guys who looked like they might have something to do with the rescue. I struck up a quick conversation with one, a surfy-looking guy with long sun-bleached hair and a beard. His name was Erik Brown. He told me that he and his friend Ivan Karadzic were divers from Koh Tao, there to lend a hand.
‘What are you going to do?’ I asked.
‘Whatever’s needed. Move gear, fill tanks, whatever we can do to help,’ said Erik, in a Canadian accent. ‘See you up there.’
Jum, David and I loaded our bags into the waiting minivan and headed straight for the mountain. At the foot of the hill, we learned the shuttle routine. Because of previous traffic congestion, all media had to climb into a songtaew (a ute with the tray covered and bench seats along each side) that would take us to another drop-off point. From here, it was a 500-metre walk up a dirt road to the staging area outside Tham Luang.
Most of the walk was a gentle incline, with green fields on either side, and a clear rivulet running along one shoulder. The source of the water soon became apparent as we walked on: several blue plumbing pipes converged, each with a short section attached at a ninety-degree angle, pointing upwards so the water fountained a metre or so into the air. Nearby, two big orange trucks were parked – these were the huge mobile generators powering the pumps. Behind the megagennies, the lower path – where Biw had parked his motor scooter ten days earlier – disappeared into lush forest, deeply shadowed in the midday sun. The dirt road steepened for fifty metres and there it was: the hub of an international search operation and a media frenzy.
Marquees were arranged on and around what had once been a square of grass in front of the parks office. Now everything floated on a sea of caramel-coloured mud, fifteen centimetres deep in places. Hundreds of people milled about and all wore gumboots.
I walked anti-clockwise around the square to get my bearings. On the right was the start of the upper path that led to Tham Luang. This area was taped off, aside from one access point through which rescue workers carried equipment in and out. The cave entrance was tantalisingly close, but just out of sight, blocked by trees. In the first days of the rescue, it had been a free-for-all, but now this was as close as the media could get.
Further along were several large tents, shading equipment and military-looking men. There was a storage area for scuba tanks – hundreds of them, lined up in silver rows. An air compressor rumbled, and there were regular loud hisses as the tanks were filled and sealed off. There was a whiteboard, surrounded by mounds of gear. The SEALs had their spot right next to the tanks. Next to them was the Chinese team, then the American military, then the Australians and the Euro team.
Further up the dirt road was a gate guarded by soldiers. The area beyond this gate was off limits to the media – the buildings up there were reserved for the top brass. The path turned left at the gate, where a row of ambulances sat waiting.
Near the ambulances was a small building, which looked like the park rangers’ office. I didn’t know it then, but this was the war room, the setting of many crucial behind-thescenes moments. Soldiers and police stood watch out front, as journalists hung around, sheepishly trying to catch an eye and snag an interview with anyone who would talk.
From there, the path turned left again down the hill. Here it looked more like a scene from a music festival. Food, water, coffee and personal items were being handed out by volunteers. It was an astonishing array of useful stuff, and everything was free. The volunteers, in their yellow shirts and blue caps, gave a surprisingly cheerful atmosphere to what was a grimly serious search.
Off to the right stood a bluestone toilet block that usually saw only a handful of people a day, but now had thousands using it. Sanitation workers did the unglamorous work of keeping it running and volunteers swept out the mud brought in from everyone’s boots.
Nearby was the medical tent and a rest area for families. A sign requested: ‘No interviews’.
I’d looped back to the start. The inner block was a square of mud we’d come to know well in the coming days. It was where the authorities had set up a large white marquee for the media. Tables and plastic chairs sunk into the mud. Reporters, camera operators, producers and translators sat an
d stood in the makeshift press centre. In the coming days, a second marquee would be added as the press grew.
We set up our camera, connected to Sydney using our LiveU (a device the size of a box of tissues that bundles multiple SIM cards to produce a broadcast signal) and did a live cross. Several mobile cell towers had been parked nearby to provide phone coverage and wifi. In between TV crosses and news gathering, I filed a radio voicer:
For Thai and Australian divers, today’s main mission is to get to a T-junction in the cave, then go left towards a ledge nicknamed Pattaya Beach. That’s where it’s hoped the twelve young footballers and their coach are sheltering. But after more than a week of heavy rain, that part of the tunnel is now blocked by mud, which must be dug out. This is the biggest rescue operation in Thai history. International experts and Thai volunteers are flocking to the scene to help, while the nation is on edge hoping for good news.
Jum got our official press passes. Mine was number 716. (At that stage, the Thai and international media were being counted together. Later, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would work out that 631 members of the foreign media had registered, from 193 different agencies.) Jum then started working out the flows of information. The main source was the twice-daily press conferences given by Governor Narongsak, where he was usually joined by soldiers, who also spoke. There were also official groups set up on the Line chat app, but the quality of that information varied. Beyond that, we tried to catch a word here and there with the rescue workers – any new snippet to keep feeding the demand for fresh updates.
We scrounged two plastic chairs – not to sit on, but to keep our bags up out of the mud. Plastic chairs were a precious commodity. We worked into the night, establishing our presence on the ground, doing live crosses and catching up on the story.
* * *
By Monday, 2 July, the mood amongst the parents was understandably grim. They sat in groups at a simple resort near the cave. Since the boys went missing, Titan’s dad, Tote, had held on to a sense of hope, and shared that hope with his wife and others. But today he couldn’t summon any hope. Ten days. It was too long. He began to feel that maybe his son wouldn’t be found. At least, not alive.
He started to cry.
The staff at the resort tried to cheer him up. A soldier came over and told him about all the things being done to try to get to the boys. It wasn’t much use. All of the parents were miserable and exhausted and stuck in a gut-wrenching place somewhere between doubt and grief.
It wasn’t just the parents beginning to have doubts.
Amongst the volunteer cave divers who’d flown in from around Thailand, there were some sobering conversations. A doctor friend shared a graph with Pae, showing the chances of survival without food. By day ten, the chance of a child surviving was down to ten per cent.
‘We were talking about, “OK, if [by] day ten we still cannot reach the boys, then we might need to change our strategy – instead of a rescue operation, it would be a recovery,”’ said Pae.
A rescue operation involved pushing the limits of safety; putting lives on the line for someone else’s. But the retrieval of bodies would be a slower effort, performed with care so as not to lose any more lives in the process.
The foreign volunteers didn’t share their dark thoughts with the SEALs or the parents. They remained right on the edge of hope. It still might be OK; the boys and the coach might still be alive. They’d give it another day. This was still a rescue effort. Just.
14
‘Brilliant’
BY MONDAY, 2 JULY, the water levels inside the cave were finally under control. Overnight, it had rained and the guages went up a few centimetres, but then quickly started to go down again as the pumps did their job. The war against water had turned and the frontline was being pushed farther into the cave.
‘We had a really good feeling [that] this is it, this is the day we’re going to get all the way through to the boys,’ said Pae.
The location of the Wild Boars was still ultimately a guess. But the clues scattered along the way seemed solid enough proof that they had turned left at the T-junction. Everyone was hoping they would be just a bit farther along, somewhere near Pattaya Beach.
But what state would they be in? Would they even be alive?
Ben and Pae said there was an agreement amongst the Euro team that it should be SEALs who would do the final push and – hopefully – find the boys.
‘It’s not just the publicity,’ said Pae. ‘It’s about communication as well. Because we know the boys are Thai, it’s better if they can have the SEALs team, who can speak Thai, going there and meet the boys first.’
Ben confirmed this account. ‘The plan was never to surface, the plan was to get close and get the two Navy SEAL doctors [there] – I promised the Navy SEALs. I said, “Listen, I’m not going to go inside, I’m here to assist you guys. Make sure your doctors are ready with all the medication and the dry bags with food.” Because I can’t surface, say hi and bye and leave again. They’re kids. You know, are half of them dead? You can’t just see them and leave for twelve hours.’
Ben and Maksym went in on that Monday morning and began tying off new rope along the cave, installing red climbing rope beyond the T-junction.
‘I pushed 200 metres of line, all the way past the restriction,’ said Ben. ‘Then it started getting shallower and shallower. I’m getting to Pattaya Beach. Next minute – end of the line. OK, good, we are very close. Tomorrow morning, we get the doctors along.’
John Volanthen has a very different account of the day. He and Rick started off from the T-junction, following the red rope Ben had laid. They came to a stretch of cave passage which had a black strap running along the length of the wall, made from the sort of flat nylon material that rock climbers use. The black guide line was an established feature of Tham Luang – something that had been set up to help visitors manage their way through.
John said Ben’s line had been tied off at the start of the black strap and left attached to a rice sack still half-filled with rope. He estimated the tie-off point was 100 metres from the T-junction, so they were still approximately 300 metres away from Pattaya Beach.
Then the British divers looked up.
‘There were a number of small polystyrene surfboards in the roof . . . bodyboards. So what would happen is that you dry-cave all the way to this point and there’s a lake here. You would lay on the surfboard and you would use the black tape to pull yourself across the water, so you stay [relatively] dry and don’t have to swim . . . But because the cave was flooded and the surfboards are polystyrene, when I got there, they were stuck in the roof,’ said John. ‘We cut off the spare line and the bag, I carried that line forwards.’
There was no need to lay line through the next twenty-metre section, they could pull themselves along the black nylon strap. It led into what seemed like a tight pocket, but when they felt around, it was actually just the pinchpoint at the side of a passage shaped like a flat diamond ( <> ). Because the line led to the corner on the left and there was limited visibility, it felt like a squeeze, but by moving slightly to the right, the divers were able to pass through with ease.
Rick and John continued on, jamming their fingers into the silt to crawl forwards against the current. They each had a 200-metre bag of rope, as well as the rest of Ben’s bag. After a long dive, tying the rope to rocks and stalactites, they reached a rocky shelf and came up for air. They checked their tanks. Cave divers use a ‘rule of thirds’ for their air supply – a third to go in, a third to go out and a third as reserve. To make their cylinders last longer the two men shut off their regulators and breathed cave air at any chance they could, saving every last breath. They also deliberately removed their masks to sniff the air.
‘We weren’t expecting to find children, we were expecting to find bodies,’ said John.
They had reached Pattaya Beach and exhausted their rope supplies. They were right on the edge of their one-third air supply limit and should have tur
ned back, but they made a calculated decision to push on, to try to lay the spool of fourmillimetre polypropylene line John had. They even decided to stop laying the line through any pockets – only the flooded sections – in order to go as far as humanly possible that day.
And here an important difference arose in the philosophies of Ben Reymenants – who says he promised the SEALs he would stop short of Pattaya Beach – and the British divers.
John pointed out that the rescuers still didn’t really know where the soccer team might be stranded, if they were indeed alive. The team had been trapped for ten days without food, so time was running out. The idea of stopping just short of them was preposterous, according to John. The two divers pushed on with a sense of determination and dread.
‘I was absolutely expecting to find bodies in the water floating towards me,’ said John. ‘I’ve found bodies in water before, it’s not pleasant. I wasn’t looking forward to it. I was genuinely expecting to just swim into a collection of bodies.’
As they entered each new sump, they had little idea what was in store for them. Would it be a five-metre puddle or a long, flooded chamber? Would it be blocked with rocks, stalactites, debris or corpses? They were about to start using up their ‘return’ third of bottled air supply. If they were to use up half their total air, they’d be forced to turn back and hope the down current pushed them out fast enough to escape before their air ran out. Every minute they went forward increased the risk.
‘We were properly out on a limb,’ said John.
The British divers got into the water and submerged. Navigation was difficult in the murky passages. They were looking for a feature they’d noted on the map where the main tunnel makes a 90-degree turn left and then another 90-degree turn right shortly afterwards. But there were also short offshoots to the cave, and the divers surfaced several times in off-route air pockets, having to then retrace their steps and try to work out which way was forward. They used their experience to look for ripples in the silt or watch the direction the sediment was flowing, in order to determine which way was upstream.
The Cave Page 10