He walked past the grove of camera tripods growing in front of the building, left there to secure a spot for the twice-daily press conferences that were led by Governor Narongsak. Inside, the main room was half filled with people. Some wore fatigues, some overalls, others cheap semitransparent raincoats. In the corner, Ae and Chang sat huddled over their phones, wrangling cave-diving gear. On the other side of the main room, a wooden door led to the smaller room, with space inside for only about fifteen people. A soldier wearing the bulbous black and red helmet of the military police stood guard, keeping the chaos from entering the inner sanctum of the war room.
Suttisak was asked to wait outside with other members of his “drill team,” who’d also arrived on-site. They sat on red plastic chairs. An hour went by. Then another. Finally, the door opened and senior commandos filed out. The drill team was ushered in.
Inside was a very senior figure indeed: the interior minister, General Anupong Paochinda. He looked tired. Suttisak got straight to the point.
“I am an engineer; my name is Suttisak Soralump,” he began, and sketched out a plan to drill into the side of the mountain.
General Anupong listened carefully. Suttisak could see he was doubtful. The engineer continued explaining the idea and how they proposed to pull it off. Then the questions began—detailed, methodical questions that impressed the country’s top technical geologist.
It started with the big picture.
“How do you know where the cave is located?” asked General Anupong.
“How will you drill so deep into the mountain?”
“Where will you place the drilling machine?”
“Is there a risk it could collapse the cave?”
And on it went.
Suttisak explained each point. The risk of a collapse was low. The drill machine arriving later that day would allow them to bore 650 feet, or almost 900 feet if they ordered in more rods to lengthen the drill bit. Exactly where the cave was underground and where they would position their drill were still being evaluated. But they hoped to at least make a hole to a cavity near the main tunnel. Hopefully the porous limestone would connect. That would give them options: they could lower a sensitive microphone to listen for signs of life or perhaps lower in food, if they found the boys.
“Hmm, that’s interesting” was the minister’s response.
Suttisak sensed an opening. The operation would be made much easier if they could airlift their equipment onto the mountain, he said. All eyes turned to the powerful General Anupong.
“Okay,” he said. “We should prepare some helicopters.”
He assigned a subordinate to look after the drill team. First priority: get some helicopters over from Lopburi, in central Thailand, to do the heavy lifting. For Suttisak, it was game on.
“That’s when, officially, my operation started.”
While engineer Suttisak was hiking up and down the mountain looking for a spot to drill an access hole toward the cave where the boys might be sheltering, Thanet Natisri was attacking the problem from below.
On Thursday, June 28, Thanet had woken at around 9 a.m., enjoying a slower morning in Bangkok after a recent busy trip to Myanmar. He’d gone there to offer technical advice about his specialty area: groundwater.
Every year, Thanet left his home in Illinois and traveled back to his homeland, Thailand, to volunteer his expertise tackling a huge but hidden problem. For the last thirty years, Thailand had been using more water than nature could put back into the groundwater system, and the demands from farms and households were only increasing. But little thought had been given to the health of the great subterranean reservoirs that sustained life above, while the plentiful monsoon rains simply ran off into the ocean. In some parts of the country, the reserve had run dry, and there wasn’t enough water to drink. In other areas—even far from the coast—the underground aquifers had turned brackish.
Thanet became interested in “groundwater recharge” projects happening in Texas and California, and wondered if the same ideas could work in Thailand. So in 2014, he gathered a team of like-minded experts and formed Groundwater Banks. Their advocacy was starting to gain traction, and successes at a local level led to a national strategy. Now, Thanet’s annual missions were focused on capturing the monsoon rains to recharge the groundwater supply.
Around midday, Thanet received a phone call from a staff member of the Chiang Rai local administration. The pumps installed at Tham Luang were not working very well, and every day the water level was rising. Thanet immediately agreed to help.
He called his father-in-law, Veera Vasinvarthana. Veera’s company was responsible for surveying and preparing the foundations for many of the high-rise buildings in Bangkok. The sprawling capital was built on a delta swamp, so his firm was adept at large-scale drainage projects. Thanet also called the university academic teams supporting the groundwater-recharge projects and asked them to pull up all the information they had on the geology and hydrology of the area.
“Once we looked at that information, we knew that it’s something really serious, it’s going to be really hard,” said Thanet. “You’re dealing with limestone caves, which means there’s going to be a lot of cracks.” The limestone would sponge up the water across the whole mountainside, and much of it would end up in the main cave.
Thanet and Veera pored over the technical data as they waited at Don Mueang Airport for their afternoon flight to Chiang Rai. After landing, they rushed to the cave area, but once they reached the foothills, their way was blocked by a traffic snarl, the backroads choked with rescue vehicles.
When they finally reached the cave, Thanet saw something that puzzled him: workers had just started drilling a bore hole outside the entrance of Tham Luang in an effort to reach the groundwater below.
“I was just standing there, thinking, ‘What good is this?’” recalled Thanet. “This was the high elevation. . . . You’re going to drill to about 130 feet before you find water—if you’re lucky.”
Thanet sought out the head engineer for Chiang Rai Province, who was in charge of the pumping operation. They discussed things for a while before Thanet spoke up.
“I have a better plan.”
His plan was to tap into the underground aquifer at an easier access point. If the groundwater was all connected, there was no reason to drill through 130 feet of rock outside Tham Luang. They could go to a lower spot and drain the groundwater from there far more efficiently.
The maps and academic reports he’d collected from the various universities in Bangkok told only part of the story. He needed to know how this watershed really worked. For that, he sought out the wisdom of local residents. They told him of a creek in front of nearby Saitong Cave that disappeared into the ground before they could harness it for their own use.
This suggested to Thanet that the water was seeping quickly down into the groundwater system. It could be a crucial clue.
He found the Thai army commander in charge and put forward his plan: drain the groundwater from the nearby Saitong Cave area as well. If the aquifers were connected, then pumping out Saitong Cave would also help drain the groundwater below Tham Luang, giving the surface water a place to go rather than pooling in the cave. It was kind of the opposite of the economic saying that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” In Thanet’s theory, “a drained aquifer empties all caves.”
The army commander agreed to the plan.
As Thanet walked back to the mountain, heading for Saitong Cave, he walked past about fifty drilling rigs standing idle on the side of the road. There were four super pumps, nicknamed nagas (dragons) for the shape of their spouts. The dragon pumps were powerful but far too big to get inside the cave. The owners of the super pumps had traveled long distances to help and desperately wanted to get involved after three days of sitting around doing nothing. They immediately agreed to help Thanet pump out groundwater. But there was one major problem: they didn’t have permission from those overseeing the search.
�
��Everyone said we cannot wait, [because] every time we try to get permission, we never hear anything back from the government,” said Thanet.
Thanet and Veera knew it would take at least a day to move the heavy equipment into position. Waiting until morning for permission to even start preparing seemed like an impossible frustration.
“We’ve got no time for this,” thought Thanet.
They spoke to a senior soldier, and the decision was made to bypass protocol and get the pumps straight to Saitong Cave.
“We were taking a risk to start [the] operation that night, without letting anyone know . . . [but] we don’t have time to waste,” said Thanet.
The army commander with them on the ground gave the orders, and soldiers began preparing the site for drilling.
While most saw the Wild Boars as being trapped by water, some Thais felt they were being held by a more mystical force—and it was this mystical force that was the key to their freedom.
On June 22, the day before the Wild Boars ventured into the cave, restaurant owner Nattanuch Prasertongh dreamed that a ghost visited her house. The ghostly woman was dressed in old-style Thai clothes: a long skirt and a band of silk wrapped around her chest, leaving her midriff bare. She didn’t speak. But Nattanuch could see that the hem of her skirt and could tell that her feet were muddy. The chef was disturbed by the dream but didn’t know what it could mean. She returned to her seafood restaurant and tried to put it out of her mind.
Five days later—as a full moon shone—Nattanuch had another dream. It was same ghostly figure, still dressed in old-fashioned garb made dirty by mud. But this time, she was inside a cave. And this time, Nattanuch says, the woman spoke:
In the dream, she said her name was Chao Nang Noi Pin Kham [Little Princess with the Gold Hairpin]. She had long hair down to her knees. She had a shackle around her right ankle. I could see her beauty behind her sorrow and anger. Her eyes were red, I assume, from crying. . . . She was extremely sad.
It was Nang Non, the pregnant princess from the folk legend—the woman whose body was said to be the mountain containing Tham Luang.
“She stood like this,” said Nattanuch, throwing her arms out to the sides, palms facing backward, as if holding back a large object.
Behind her, in the darkness, was a group of boys. In a Facebook post that day, Nattanuch wrote:
In the dream, Princess Nang Non told me that she’s been waiting for Kruba for over 300 years to release her. If he didn’t come, she wouldn’t let the boys out. She was very furious. . . . The boys are staying behind a water curtain or stalactites that form the shape of a curtain. There will be a chimney above the boys. After passing the water curtain, turn right and the boys should be there. . . . The princess also said she didn’t want any food or other monks. She had a karmic affair with Kruba Boonchum.
A “karmic affair” was the euphemistic way Nattanuch described the relationship, but what she meant was that the revered monk Kruba Boonchum was a reincarnation of Nang Non’s lover, the stable boy who got stabbed to death in the myth.
Kruba Boonchum was known as “the Monk of Three Countries,” with devotees from Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos. He was said to have psychic abilities and other special powers. From a young age, he’d shown prodigious interest in meditation and even as a teenager was sought after for his Buddhist sermons. He was bestowed the rarely given title kruba to signify his reputation as an exceptional teacher. Kruba Boonchum went barefoot, ate a meager diet of fruit and nuts, and kept almost none of the money donated to him by his followers.
His meditation exploits were legendary. Every year, during the rainy season, Kruba Boonchum would retreat for vassana, a period of quiet reflection sometimes explained to outsiders as Buddhist Lent. He would usually spend those three months in caves; silent, alone, meditating.
In 2010, he took his solitude even further, undertaking an extraordinary three-year, three-month, three-day retreat in the Rajagrha cave in northern Thailand. He didn’t speak to anyone. He would emerge when nobody was around to take the food offerings his followers left for him at the mouth of the cave and to respond to spiritual questions written down for him. During that time, his renown spread. When he emerged, tens of thousands of people had gathered to catch a glimpse of him and—for the lucky ones—to receive a lock of his now long hair. Kruba Boonchum spent four days with his followers, then returned to a cave for his usual three-month rainy-season vassana.
Kruba Boonchum’s devotion to meditation, his ethical conduct, and his powerful preaching made him revered. Understandably, Nattanuch’s post about this famous monk was divisive. While some believed the story and appealed for Kruba Boonchum’s help with the search, others dismissed it as quackery. After all, the timing was a little suspicious. Her post came four days after the boys had gone missing. Everyone knew the story of Nang Non, and Kruba Boonchum was the best-known monk in the area. It would be easy to make up a story like this to gain some attention, maybe even promote her business.
There was no shortage of critics. Nattanuch knew this would be the case and tried to address it in her Facebook post: “This is just my dream. I don’t want fame. I have a restaurant and a comfortable life.”
Nattanuch had grown used to the spooky forces guiding her. She said that for many years a “dark spirit” had visited her and offered her advice that turned out well. It was this dark spirit who had told her to start selling expensive Alaskan king crabs in her sleepy mountain town of Chiang Dao three years earlier. What seemed like a preposterous idea had somehow become a hit, and now seafood lovers flocked to her restaurant.
But she realized how crazy it must sound to others. No, she laughed, unfortunately the dark spirit never told her what the lottery numbers would be. Or told her where she could find cheaper wholesale prices for Alaskan king crabs.
Two days later, she posted another message, seemingly in response to some of the naysayers:
Let me add something from my perspective. Nang Non princess chose this time because Kruba Boonchum has cut off from the past and doesn’t attach to anything in order to go to nirvana. [Meaning he has broken the cycle of reincarnation.] She requested but Kruba Boonchum let go. She had been waiting for him to release her but he never came. When the boys went in the cave, she closed down the cave with water and mud. She desperately wanted to meet Kruba Boonchum even if she had to commit a serious crime/sin. Her sobbing in the dream is still echoing in my eyes. Kruba Boonchum has [to] come. I have told my dream. Nang Non princess, please release the poor boys. I wish her free[dom] from suffering. Please let my dream come true.
The Facebook post was spotted by one of Kruba Boonchum’s disciples, setting in motion a part of the cave-rescue story that, though barely noted by the English-language media, was central to many Thais’ understanding of what happened to the Wild Boars.
10
Help Arrives
By Wednesday, June 27, the searchers were losing the war against water. A huge downpour began just before dawn, and the water level inside the cave began rising by nearly six inches an hour. The rescuers who had started at the T-junction a few days earlier were now forced back farther and farther, until finally they were at Chamber 3. They’d lost some 550 yards. In military terms, they were in retreat.
Pae realized that as more water entered the cave, more diving would be involved. And for that they’d need to stage tanks throughout the chambers. A lot of tanks. He called in his technical diving instructor from Pattaya—an American, Bruce Konefe. The fifty-seven-year-old was a Michigan native who had learned to dive while stationed in Okinawa, Japan, with the US Marine Corps. He later combined those elements of his life, diving for US and Japanese wartime shipwrecks in the Gulf of Thailand. He’d also discovered and explored twenty-five virgin cave systems in Thailand and the Philippines.
Bruce was experienced at running technical dive missions, having helped as a support diver for world-record attempts at the deepest dives. Few divers would ever see depths of “200m” (just over 650
feet) displayed on their dive computers, but Bruce not only had been to those depths, he had worked that far below the surface, on wrecks and in helping other divers.
He arrived at the cave site on Wednesday afternoon and met up with Pae. They entered Tham Luang as far as Chamber 3, where the waterline slowly crept up the big slope of the forward command area. Then they started to work out just how many tanks they would need to pre-position throughout the cave—if they did catch a break and the water stabilized.
Pae’s new friends, the SEALs, had installed three submersible pumps. These pumps weren’t that big, and there were problems getting a reliable electricity supply to power them. In the end, they managed to get only one working. But it was nowhere near enough. The water kept rising.
There was one success, though. The soldiers found an old wired radio—technology from fifty years ago—and installed a power line between the entrance and Chamber 3, providing crucial communications to the innermost staging area. This bypassed the arduous ninety-minute walk, now at times through neck-deep water, to get messages in and out.
Just before Chamber 3, there was a narrow and twisted sump, like an S-bend in a sink drain. Getting through it involved corkscrewing your body around the rocks. As the water rose, the air gap in the S-bend got smaller. Those in Chamber 3 who couldn’t dive were sent out. It may have been possible to swim through just by holding your breath, but it would have taken nerves of steel, and any snag could quickly turn fatal. By the day’s end, it had sealed shut. It was a nuisance for the divers, who had to strap their gear on again. But for non-divers, that short, tricky watery dip was as good as a locked door.
The retreat from Chamber 3 was a serious blow to morale. Things were bad. But reinforcements from all across the globe were quickly descending upon Tham Luang to lend their expertise to the rescue effort.
When the British divers Rick and John, and caver Rob, arrived at Chiang Rai Airport, there was an awkward moment. Someone had made up a banner at the airport—something about them being the best cave divers in the world—and the three were asked to stand in front of it for a photo. They did so reluctantly; it was not the sort of claim these modest men would make, and they were wasting time. But they’d just arrived and didn’t want to be rude.
Miracle in the Cave Page 6