John and Rick became known internationally as the go-to guys when it came to tricky and dangerous cave rescues.
Both men were used to the less-than-lovely diving conditions in England. Cold, muddy sumps were their thing. And that would come in handy in Tham Luang.
Pae woke around dawn that Tuesday. He hadn’t slept particularly well. After arriving at Tham Luang the night before, and getting a briefing and a map from the military commander in charge, he went back to the resort where the SEALs were staying. “Resort” was perhaps misleading. The place was old and unkempt. When he lifted up his pillow, ants had formed a nest underneath. It was a restless night.
Before arriving on the scene, Pae had asked around about Tham Luang, but none of his cave-diving friends had ever heard of it before. There was a good reason for this. Most cave diving is done in caves that remain permanently flooded, allowing the silt to settle and the water to clear. Tham Luang was dry for half the year and then filled with monsoonal rainwater, flowing in a muddy torrent through the mountain. This held little appeal for cave divers. But although Pae couldn’t help the SEALs learn more about the terrain, he could still bring his cave-diving expertise to help them navigate it more safely.
He found the commander of the morning shift and explained how he could help, talking the senior SEAL through the concept of side-mounted air tanks that hang off a special harness under the divers’ armpits. This gives a more streamlined profile and allows divers to squeeze through narrow “restrictions.” He also suggested the idea of pre-positioning spare tanks along the way, so divers could push farther into the cave. The SEALs had had a gut feeling they’d been close to the boys on Monday; hopefully, with the help of the spare tanks, they would find them today.
“He liked the idea right away and asked me to go in with his team that morning,” said Pae.
The forty-two-year-old carried a few of his own spare side-mounted harnesses into the cave. As he walked, he could see marks that he guessed had been made by the boys and their coach—muddy crawl marks where someone had explored a side route, and handprints that suggested someone pressing against the rock wall for balance.
Pae made it past the open cavern of Chamber 3 and almost to the T-junction. At that stage, it was still possible to walk or wade all that way. He gave six SEALs a crash course—Cave Diving 101—and some of them got into the sump. Ever-resourceful, those who didn’t have proper gear tied lengths of rope into makeshift side-mount harnesses until the real equipment arrived. Some stuck with their back-mounted tanks. The water had risen overnight, and the searchers had lost ground—whereas the previous night the pool had started just yards from the T-junction, it was now about 330 feet away. That meant extra diving and awful visibility.
Outside, the rain kept falling and water seeped through the rocks, pouring out of the T-junction and pushing them back. Pae estimated that the water level was rising by about four inches an hour. Underwater, the SEALs attacked the second restriction that had stopped them on Monday. That stirred up the mud so much that the divers could see their wrist-mounted dive computers only when they pressed them against their masks. These devices showed the depth, time underwater, and other statistics needed to make decisions about safe diving. The dive team had only thirty air tanks to rotate among themselves—nowhere near enough to pre-position tanks and advance safely.
It was tough, frustrating work. The SEALs and Pae knew they were losing the battle, getting pushed back by the water. They kept going all day, but it was no use. Pae eventually walked out of the cave at 11 p.m., exhausted and disappointed.
While Pae battled the torrents, his sister, Chang, was also busy, her phone ringing constantly.
Celebrity Ae’s Facebook posts appealing for equipment were working brilliantly. Whatever she asked for, on behalf of Pae and the SEALs, was pledged within hours, boxed up in Bangkok, and sent up to the cave: side-mount harnesses, lights, carabiners, gloves, helmets, rope. One young man had even called up to say he didn’t have any money but he had a truck and volunteered to do the twelve-hour delivery run.
One of the biggest requests was for more tanks and regulators, worth tens of thousands of dollars. And there was a catch. Chang had to explain to would-be donors that they might not get their gear back; it would be too hard to keep track of each piece, and some might get damaged.
Few were deterred. The donations rolled in. One day Ae asked for 200 tanks, and by the very next morning they’d already secured 120.
But not all the calls that Chang received were about equipment. Elderly ladies phoned in crying, sick with worry. “Why haven’t they been found yet?” they demanded to know. Some called to say they only had one hundred baht (about three dollars) to spare, but wanted to contribute. Chang explained that they weren’t accepting any cash, only equipment. (The Thai government had wisely done the same, trying to avoid scammers.) Some callers offered their opinion on the best plan of action. And some calls were just plain weird, tapping into Thai mysticism, with a twist.
“They believe in[side] the cave, they have the angel [Princess Nang Non] . . . so someone called to tell the children’s fathers, every children’s father, to [get] naked and walk into the cave,” Chang recalled.
Another person told her she should print out big posters of handsome guys and take them into the cave, while chanting certain prayers.
“I know how to stop the rain,” offered another caller, explaining a complicated method of planting a lemongrass tree at the cave’s entrance to halt the monsoon.
Chang did her best to manage her new role as the nation’s unofficial counselor. She wanted to be nice, but also needed to free up the donation hotline. “I said, ‘Excuse me, I don’t have that much time. Would you please text me [instead]? I promise I’m going to read it.’”
The Wild Boars were starving. But by the fourth day, the gnawing and pangs in their stomachs had grown less severe, the pain of their hunger fading. The boys had heard whistles and shouts on the first night, so they were confident someone was coming to save them. Nonetheless, they continued to search for other ways out.
The Planetarium had provided a sanctuary for the last three nights, constantly lit up and sparkling because of Note’s jammed flashlight with its remarkable battery life. But as they watched the water slowly rising up the bank, they weren’t sure it would remain a safe place to be. The boys and Coach Ek made a decision to head deeper into the cave complex. After a while, they came to a section of dry tunnel that was noticeably warmer than the rest of the cave. They made their bed there for the night.
The next morning, they reassessed their situation. The tunnel was warm, but the boys weren’t keen to stay too long there. The water was still rising. It felt like it was chasing them deeper inside the mountain. They walked farther in, away from the entrance, looking for a safer spot to wait.
Past Pattaya Beach, they came to a steep bank that went back more than twenty yards. The clearance offered by the sloping muddy mound would, they hoped, give them plenty of space, in case the water kept coming. Importantly, there was lots of clean water dripping from the walls. One feature was hard to miss: two rounded white stalactites hung down from the roof, with water running like a tap down their sides. It was these unique formations that gave the chamber its nickname, Nern Nom Sao (Mound of the Young Woman’s Breasts).
It didn’t take much effort to settle into their new home. Coach Ek dug a “pee hole” in the dirt near the top of the slope, and their renovations were complete. They explored their new site and found that the cave wall at the back was dirt, not rock. This gave them hope that maybe there was something behind it. A secret chamber? A way out?
About a half mile away, on the other side of the waterlocked passages, Vern noticed something.
Where before the water gushed into the T-junction, swirling and splashing in a deafening roar, now it was silent. The pool at the confluence had risen above the feeder passages to the left and right, so the new water was being pushed silently to the bottom, like a
hose filling a backyard swimming pool. The only sign of the flow was the steadily rising water level.
Vern Unsworth was not a man given to flowery language, but even he was taken by the shift in the sound and the mood.
“It was quiet,” said Vern. “I would even say it was eerie.”
9
Plan B
Rawheen Joanglao looked at the plane in front of him with uncertainty. It was just after noon on Wednesday, June 27, at Hat Yai Airport in Thailand’s Deep South. The forty-four-year-old was not scared of heights—he climbed for a living—but he was pretty nervous about this big metal tube that would soon launch him into the sky. It was his first time in an airplane.
“What if something goes wrong with the plane?” he thought. “We’ll all be dead.”
While the SEALs tackled the crisis head-on, all around Thailand, people were coming up with alternative plans to reach the Wild Boars.
The day before, Rawheen had been relaxing at home with his wife and three children. Libong Island is about as far away from Chiang Rai as possible, while still being in the same country—way down south, off the coast of the tendon of land that connects Thailand to Malaysia. Libong Island is a postcard image of tropical bliss, with crystal-blue water, white sandy beaches, and shady trees. In many places, forest-covered cliffs jutted abruptly upward.
It is these rock formations that provided Rawheen and his friends with a living. Their job was to scale up or rappel down cliffs and caves, collecting the small edible nests built by birds and sell them to the Chinese. The male swiftlets constructed these precious nests with their saliva, adding a bit each day for a month to build up a structure the size and shape of a cupped hand, just big enough for the eggs. The nests are usually an off-white color, but even more valuable are the red “blood” nests.
Birds’ nests are a delicacy for the Chinese. They melt the nests into a gelatinous soup, which connoisseurs claim can do anything, from curing asthma to raising libido to improving the complexion of the skin, although lab tests suggest the mixture of ash, protein, and carbohydrates has no real medicinal value whatsoever.
But what mattered to the climbers of Libong Island was that people were prepared to pay big money for these nests. Traders would spend hundreds of dollars for a pound of these bird-spit nests, making the risky rope work worthwhile for Rawheen.
Like most people in Thailand, Rawheen and his fellow climbers had been following the story of the missing soccer team on TV. The island’s chief called the men, wondering if they could help in the cave rescue. The climbers had been thinking the same thing. Quickly, they gathered a team of eight to travel up to Tham Luang to see if they could assist. It didn’t take long to prepare their equipment: a pair of gloves each, and some very long ropes.
The cliff climbers of Libong Island had no idea about the geography of Chiang Rai, but they had heard about the search for shafts down into the cave. They knew they could rappel as well as anyone in Thailand, their wiry muscles hardened by days hanging hundreds of yards above the ground. But to get up to Chiang Rai to help with the search, they first had to put their lives in the hands of this big silver bird, which would take Rawheen higher than he’d ever been before.
“We were excited and at the same time scared.”
When the bird’s-nest collectors arrived at Tham Luang later that afternoon, they joined a long queue to register themselves as part of the search effort. But there were hundreds in the line, and it was moving slowly. These were men used to action. They gave up on the registration and headed to the hills. The mountain was crawling with soldiers, volunteer rescue workers, and locals scouring the slopes for shafts that might connect down to the cave. The eight climbers from Libong Island found their first hole and got to work.
Their method was simple. Terrifyingly simple.
“One will stay at the top, while the rest will go down with a single nylon rope . . . one at a time,” explained Rawheen.
Apart from a pair of gloves, the men used no safety equipment. If the rope broke or a knot slipped, they would fall and almost certainly die. With their anchorman stationed at the top, the first climber would freestyle rappel until he found a ledge he could stay on. Then he would attach a new rope and shout to the next man, who would climb down farther and find another spot to cling to. The second man would add more rope and shout to the first man, who’d yell up to the top to send another man down. One by one they’d descend until they were all positioned at intervals along their single strand of joined ropes.
“The distance between us is shouting distance,” said Rawheen. “We just have to make sure each person above and below us can hear.”
Rawheen and his friends found their groove.
“It felt the same; our usual work and this rescue is very much the same. We always do this when we are collecting the birds’ nests.”
That first day, the climbing team went nearly as deep as one thousand feet down a shaft, but they ran out of rope. Frustrated, they went back to the operation area in front of the cave and tried to find more rope. They couldn’t. They felt dispirited.
But the following day, the Libong Island village chief flew up to Chiang Rai and connected the climbers to the SEALs, who gave them more rope. After three days of shouting up and down, the military even gave them radios.
Engineer Suttisak Soralump came at the problem from another angle.
Suttisak knew a fair bit about the underground world of Chiang Rai Province. As president of the Thai Geotechnical Society, he’d been deeply involved in studying the region after it was rocked by an earthquake in 2014, probably the biggest Thailand had ever had. He studied the terrain for landslide risks and dam damage, using his skills as an engineer to peer into the earth and make sense of its powerful energy.
“When I heard about the incident in Chiang Rai, of course it caught my attention,” said Suttisak.
But then he heard that a team of highly trained Navy SEALs was on the scene and thought, “Oh, that’s great,” figuring they’d find the boys and get them out soon. He put it out of his mind and got on with his job teaching at Bangkok’s Kasetsart University.
On the morning of Tuesday, June 26, the phone rang. It was a friend from Chiang Rai who worked at the disaster-prevention unit. She said they needed pumps—as many pumps as possible.
Being an academic, Suttisak didn’t just have industrial water pumps lying about his house. But he did have links to people who did have that sort of equipment—miners, dam builders, and construction companies. Around 10 a.m., he posted the request for pumps on his Facebook page.
Suttisak set some rules. First, this was a volunteer mission: nobody would be getting paid. And second, the pumps must be delivered to the cave site in Chiang Rai. There would be no help with transport. Time was critical and the deal was: pump on-site or nothing.
Within two hours, he got pledges for twenty pumps, and by 1 p.m.—just three hours after Suttisak posted the request—the first pump arrived at Tham Luang.
After successfully summoning pumps to the search site, Suttisak felt good. He’d done something to help. He returned to his academic duties. It was a busy time. He was deep into the process of writing a book, working his way toward a promotion from associate professor to full professor. But that night, his mind wandered back to the lost boys and their coach, the pumps, and the search.
“There should be a second plan,” thought Suttisak. “At that stage, there was no Plan B, there was just one plan: pump the water out and get the kids out from the cave—that’s all,” he told me later.
Again, he took to Facebook, wondering online whether drilling into the mountain might be an option. The response was huge. His geotechnical engineering friends replied with their opinions. The media started to call him. He’d unwittingly unleashed a storm and now had to harness its energy.
He called an emergency meeting at the Engineering Institute of Thailand on Wednesday evening to discuss the drilling option properly. About twenty key figures of industry and
academia showed up. Suttisak stressed to them the seriousness of what they were talking about. If they said they could help, they had to have the practical capacity to make it happen. And if something went wrong, people would look for someone to blame.
They talked through various drilling scenarios. It was hard to know the right approach. As engineers, they were used to visiting a site, studying the terrain, and ordering the right drill for the job. But this was no time for standard procedures. They made an educated guess and ordered a drill to be moved to the site. The hole wouldn’t be very wide, only about five inches—certainly not enough to extract a person. But it might be a useful asset to have. Suttisak booked a ticket to Chiang Rai for the following day.
When he arrived at Tham Luang a few minutes before noon on Thursday, June 28, Suttisak was careful to stay clear of the media. He didn’t want news of a possible Plan B getting out yet.
“If I expose my identity at that time, that I have a new way, that is going to give hope to society immediately,” he said later. “But we still don’t know if this hope [i.e., plan] is going to work or not.”
On a more practical level, the plan was still only in Suttisak’s head; it hadn’t even been pitched to those in charge, much less accepted. The engineer sought out Governor Narongsak: the governor also had a degree in engineering, so Suttisak knew he would understand the various technical aspects. He explained the plan to him, saying a drilling machine was already on its way and would be delivered that evening, while another would arrive the following day.
Though the governor welcomed the idea, final approval would have to come from a higher level. After briefing several military officers, Suttisak was eventually invited to the converted national parks office to give a briefing.
Miracle in the Cave Page 5