The Great Cave Rescue

by James Massola

  Finally, the Thai authorities began to respond as the heat was turned up on them by the media publicly. To limit the damage, Dr Jesada Chokedamrongsuk from the Thai Ministry of Public Health was hastily thrust before the cameras.3 Two of the boys—all of whom remained unnamed—had mild lung infections and signs of pneumonia, she said, while doctors were concerned about the heart rate and body temperature of a third. To protect their eyes after so long in the dark, the boys had worn sunglasses inside for about 24 hours. They would remain in hospital for about a week while their heart rate was monitored and they underwent blood tests and lung X-rays. As a precautionary measure, they would receive IV fluids and vaccines. The boys with slightly abnormal lung X-rays belonged to the first group of Boars but the second group to have been rescued were, if anything, in better shape.

  After nine days of energy gels and MREs, all the boys in hospital had started to eat ‘normal’ food—nothing adventurous, just soft-boiled rice and a small amount of chocolate. Local pork and chicken dishes, and KFC—which the boys had expressed a wish to eat—would come later. Most importantly, the first four boys had seen and spoken to their parents, even though they were in their quarantine ward on the other side of a glass wall, and the second group of four would also see their loved ones later on Tuesday.

  But the Thai authorities continued to pressure the families not to speak to the media. Officially, the identity of the first eight Boars who had been rescued from the cave remained a tightly held secret.

  10–18 JULY: INSIDE

  Mission possible

  The news that the eight rescued Boars were in relatively good health boosted the spirits of the rescue team. They needed it. All the divers and rescuers were exhausted. They’d been working a minimum of twelve-hour days, and it was all on ‘cave time’, as the divers called it. Loosely translated, that meant their days alternated between intense bursts of draining physical activity and long stretches of inactivity, when time would seem to stand still in the dark, damp silence of Tham Luang.

  As long as he was in the cave, each man had to constantly maintain a high degree of focus and concentration—when it was time to go, you had better be ready, because a boy’s life depended on it. Of course that, too, became wearing after a while.

  Moreover, the third day of rescues would ask more of them than the first two days. They had to dive five people out of the cave, not four, and even after they had been taken out of the cave, the rescuers couldn’t abandon their stations inside. There were still three Thai SEALs with Dr Pak in Nern Nom Sao.

  The rescue began at around 11 am on Tuesday, 10 July, while the first details about the rescued Boars were being released. It promised to be a very long day. For the third successive day, the Thais—and, indeed, millions of people around the world—stopped, watched, waited and hoped for the best.

  Once again, only minimal changes were made to the rescue plan for the four remaining boys and their coach. All the local and foreign divers and rescuers were expected to follow exactly the same procedure on all three days in order to maintain control, in spite of the chaotic and unpredictable conditions in the cave.

  So on day 3 of the rescue, John Volanthen, Rick Stanton, Chris Jewell, Jason Mallinson and Richard Harris swam all the way through to the four remaining Boars and their coach in chamber 9. Jim Warny was moved up again, from chamber 6 to chamber 8, where he joined Craig Challen, Claus Rasmussen and Mikko Paasi.

  Mallinson would make the difficult 350-metre dive between chambers 9 and 8 twice.

  On his first trip, he would shuttle Coach Ekapol ‘Ek’ Chantawong to Warny, who would then take over and guide Ek the rest of the way out. As an adult, Ek would have been more difficult to manoeuvre through the tightest sections of the cave.

  The only other notable change was the ‘dive out’ order. This time, Volanthen would come out first, then Stanton, Jewell and Mallinson last. This meant Mallinson would have extra time to recharge after his first ‘shuttle’ dive with coach Ek. For his final rescue dive, he was also assigned one of the smaller boys, 13-year-old Mongkol ‘Mark’ Boonpiam. The other three Boars who would come out on day 3 were 11-year-old Chanin ‘Titan’ Vibulrungruang, 13-year-old Somepong ‘Pong’ Jaiwong and 16-year-old Pornchai ‘Tee’ Kamluang.

  The movement of Warny to chamber 8 meant Erik Brown would be flying solo in chamber 6, but it wasn’t expected to be a major problem—the divers were using this stop less and less as they became more practised at diving out of the cave. In fact, overall, fewer stops were now required. Finally, Connor Roe and Josh Bratchley would remain in chamber 5.

  On that third and final morning, the euphoria of saving eight from eight in the first two days seemed a long time ago. The divers had to be prepared for something to go wrong at any moment. Just because they had now successfully saved eight of the Wild Boars did not mean that day 3 would go off without a hitch. All along, the rescue teams—the Brits and the Americans, the Euro divers, the Thais and the Australians—had expected there to be casualties. But to achieve so much, and then lose someone on the final day, was unthinkable. For all the meticulous planning on the third and final day of the rescue, Tham Luang cave still had the capacity to throw up unexpected difficulties that nearly resulted in catastrophic consequences. By day 3 visibility in some underwater sections of the cave had become abysmal; the mud in other sections had somehow become thicker as the cave floor had dried out. Guidelines and empty cylinders littered the cave, creating more obstacles.

  Mallinson would later reveal in an interview with a television reporter that the final dive out was an agony.1 The face mask intended for young Mark was simply too big for the skinny young Boar and, without a tight seal, he would drown on the way out. Mark had already been sedated with Ketamine, so time was running out.

  Another mask, with a different type of seal, was quickly found and pressed onto Mark’s face. The strap worked differently, which meant the mask could be dislodged sideways; Mallinson feared that any ill-judged bump could knock it off, and cause Mark to drown. But it was now or never. He pulled the child close to him and began the dive from chamber 9 to chamber 8.

  The rescue didn’t work out precisely as planned for Jewell, either. Close to the end of his dive out, Jewell lost his grip on the guideline between chamber 4 and chamber 3. In the pitch black of the cave, it was a terrifying moment for the Brit—a brush with death. Keeping one hand on the vulnerable, sedated Boar, Jewell began to search around in the dark for the line that would lead him and his charge to safety. ‘I knew the dive line couldn’t be far away but I couldn’t find it. I deliberately tried to slow my breathing down, tried to stay exactly where I was, stayed stationary, deploying a strategy of looking for the line and then ultimately finding an electrical cable,’ he later revealed in a television interview.2

  The sense of relief that flooded over him when he found the cable was momentarily overwhelming. But Jewell still needed to get back to safety and take stock of the situation. He was also worried about his boy: hypothermia was a risk after an extended period in the water, despite the wetsuit the boy was wearing. Disoriented, he found his way back to the sand in chamber 4, where he wrapped his Boar in a space blanket and waited for a colleague who could provide a second pair of hands to come by.

  Fortunately, Mallinson and Harris were through soon enough, and helped him finish the job. Jewell ended up being the last of the British divers out of the cave on that day—just—with Mallinson pipping him on the way out.

  In chamber 3, the tension and excitement was building. One, two, three, four … five. The British divers, leaders and heroes all of the rescue, could scarcely believe it. Relief washed over the men. They were all out.

  Now the more than 150 people stationed between chamber 3 and the cave exit swung into action. There was a momentary release of exultation that the boys were out, but there was still plenty of work to do.

  The kids’ breathing still had to be checked: okay.

  Doctors rushed over. More checks were made. Th
e plan had always been to keep the boys completely ‘under’, at least as far as chamber 3. But on the third day at least one of the boys was filmed awake and talking by the time he reached the cave entrance.

  One by one, on that Tuesday evening, Ek and each of the boys was placed in a Sked and passed through the hands of many rescue workers. Thai SEALs, Americans, Chinese and Australians formed relay teams, hoisting them up and down the steep, slippery slopes, or dragging and carrying them through the sections between chamber 3 and chamber 2. Closer to the cave’s exit, another point where there were still considerable areas of water to negotiate, floats were attached to the Skeds.

  Wang Yingjie’s team of eleven Chinese rescuers from the Beijing Peaceland Foundation did their part, hauling in equipment and helping to transport the boys through the last few chambers. This team had played a major role in setting up the pulley system that was used to transport the boys part of the way out from chamber 3. However, the boys were carried for much of the way out from chamber 3 and would pass through more than a hundred pairs of hands on their way out, too.3 Wang says the pulley system was built to support four times the estimated maximum weight of the boys. Designing and installing the system had proved difficult because of the low visibility in the cave, the long distances they were attempting to span, and the twisting, turning nature of the tunnel, which is very narrow at certain points.

  ‘We worked with the Royal Thai Navy, the US, Australia and [the] UK and we were one team,’ Wang says. ‘Each day we had a meeting and each of us getting [sic] an assignment. We would do our part. Language wasn’t a barrier and we found that language used in technical terms like diving and rope system[s] was universal. Since the beginning, my goal … as a volunteer was to save the kids and we—the whole world—shared the same goal.’

  In chamber 2, more pulleys were managed by Thai volunteers, amateur cavers, climbers and rope access technicians from the nearby city of Chiang Mai. Again, these lines helped with transporting the Skeds through some of the trickiest parts of the cave, but much of the carrying work still had to be done by hand. At one point, to facilitate the transport of the boys, each Sked was slid along the huge water-pump hoses.4

  During the first few days of their involvement, the AFP divers had hauled hundreds and hundreds of kilograms of kit through thick mud and flooded sections of the cave to chamber 3. Now, on the last rescue day, they were in the thick of it, too, helping to carry the boys out of the cave.

  ‘Once [each boy] was handed over to us, we were down at his face mask just listening for that breath,’ said Senior Constable Matthew Fitzgerald, remembering the overwhelming relief he felt as each of the boys was found to be still breathing.

  Kiwi diver Ross Schnauer, an expat who had lived in Thailand for about fifteen years, was another member of the international contingent who volunteered to help.

  On that final day, Schnauer spent about seven hours in the cave helping carry the boys out in difficult conditions.

  Working in a team of four and relying on headlights to combat the darkness of the cave, they would receive about five minutes’ notice before a boy would arrive.

  ‘When they came out of the water they were put on a stretcher, their oxygen changed and the first aid guys watched them over … then we were paired ready to receive them and move them in a chain.’

  Coming through his section of the cave, Schnauer noticed that some of the boys had their eyes open while others were unconscious. But he was focused on the mission at hand.

  ‘The part of the cave we were in was very rocky and unstable. You had to be very careful where you put your feet. To be honest, I did not notice anything about the boys, I was too worried about where to put my feet and make sure that I had a tight grip on the legs. You would not let them go at this time.’5

  The rescue team left the full-face masks on the boys for the rest of the journey out of the cave because the air quality in the cave had declined so severely, and the Boars’ cylinders contained higher than usual concentrations of oxygen that would saturate their blood.

  As Ek and the final group of boys exited the cave one by one, they were checked at the field hospital outside before they too were bundled into ambulances and ferried to the waiting helicopters, thence to Chiang Rai Hospital.

  Back at the car park of the Pong Pha Sub District Administration Office, news that the final five had been successfully rescued leaked out. But this time it took only about twenty minutes. Around an hour later Narongsak Osatanakorn confirmed the mission was under way—and that all five were on their way out. ‘Today we might have to wait longer, but it will be worth the wait to get all five out,’ he said. Cheers went up among the volunteers and, indeed, across the world.

  Heavy rain had fallen earlier in the day, but once it ceased in the early afternoon, the temperature in Mae Sai soared. At 4.06 pm, a little more than five hours after the rescue began, the first Boar—coach Ek—was out of the cave and on his way to hospital. The rest emerged in a rush; an hour later, the last boy was freed.

  Just before 7 pm the Thai Navy SEALs, who had once again been providing updates on their Facebook page, announced: ‘12 wild Boars and coach out of the cave. Everyone safe. This time, waiting to pick up four frogs. Hooyah!’ Then: ‘We are not sure if this is a miracle, a science, or what. All the thirteen Wild Boars are now out,’ they added a little later.

  It had taken only eight hours to get all five out, a quicker extraction than on days 1 and 2. Ambulances screamed by, helicopters buzzed overhead. The noise confirmed—as if further confirmation was required—that the last four boys and their coach were on their way to hospital. Safe. Saved. Residents of Chiang Rai, cheering and blowing whistles in support of the Boars and their rescuers, gathered near the hospital where the boys were being cared for.

  But there were still four people to come out.

  While people outside the cave were celebrating the rescue of Ek and the last four boys, those four ‘frogs’—Dr Pak and the three SEALs—were still in the cave. And although these men had managed to make the dangerous dive through the cave once before, getting out again was going to be a dangerous exercise for them.

  The quartet had gone in nine days earlier. Since then the conditions in the cave had changed markedly: while the water levels had fallen, the amount of mud and debris had increased, creating more obstacles. And unlike the British, Australian and Euro divers, these four men were not experienced cave divers. They had taken hours longer to get through to Nern Nom Sao than the Brits. Since then they’d been sitting in the dark for nine days, eating ration packs and caring for twelve scared kids and a young coach as they concentrated on the Boars’ welfare rather than their own. The dangers were very real. Time passed without any word that Dr Pak and the three SEALs had made it out of the cave, and it slowly dawned on people that the ‘four frogs’ might be at risk, too.

  In the end, the four men emerged almost two and a half hours after the last boy. When the final SEAL arrived in chamber 3 from Nern Nom Sao, he was greeted with a roar of celebration; the atmosphere was electric with a shared sense of relief. The SEALs had not forgotten Saman Gunan, one of their brothers, but now, finally, everyone else was safe.

  One of the AFP divers vividly remembers that roar, which bounced off the walls from chamber 3 all the way to the entrance. ‘I was right down the bottom [near the entrance] but you could hear all the cheers,’ he says. ‘It was like a Mexican wave when we got the last diver out, that’s when the cheers and shouting happened.’

  However, their rescue wasn’t officially confirmed until fifteen minutes into Narongsak Osatanakorn’s press conference that Tuesday evening. Of course the Thai Navy SEALs captured the moment for posterity; a photo of the quartet—dressed all in black, with sunglasses, face masks and diving kit hanging off them, giving the camera the thumbs up—quickly went viral.

  Wang Yingjie, from the Chinese Beijing Peaceland Foundation contingent, said that many people had thought the rescue mission was over once the boys we
re out. ‘At that moment, our focus was on [the] SEALs because all the kids were brought out and we were pretty sure they would be safe.’ But when the four men finally emerged from the cave, ‘we realised that it was over and the whole world knew it. We were overjoyed but we never expected that we would lose our fellow rescue worker [Saman Gunan]. Some people might ask why we were sad, I’d say that he was one of the team and we were “one”.’

  But Tham Luang cave had one more surprise for the rescuers.

  Just as the pressure was finally easing, now that all the Wild Boars and their companions in chamber 9 had been rescued, the unthinkable happened. The pumps, which had held back the water levels in Tham Luang cave for more than a week, began to fail.

  Erik Brown, who at the time was with his dive buddies Claus Rasmussen and Mikko Paasi in chamber 3, vividly remembers the moment the pumps failed: ‘We were sitting there, and we said we would wait until everyone leaves. We waited for nearly three hours [for the final four] in chamber 3.

  ‘Those pumps had been working for like seven days straight. It was right before the first SEAL popped his head out. There was a loud bang. Then, as number 3 comes out, a second pump breaks. The water level was now rising fast; you [could] see the water level rising. We had all our dive gear sitting there, we just had to leave it.’

  At this stage there were perhaps 30 people—divers, Thai Navy SEALs, US Marines—still in chamber 3. Overall, there were about a hundred rescue workers between that chamber and the entrance. They were all being chased out of Tham Luang cave by a wall of water.

  Closer to the entrance, the AFP divers were involved in a half-hearted clean-up when they heard the pumps fail, but didn’t immediately realise what had happened until rescuers, their headlights glinting in the dark of Tham Luang, suddenly appeared, running towards them.6

  ‘There were a hundred guys running down the hill and the water was coming … [it] was noticeably rising,’ one of the AFP divers says. He and his colleagues simply turned and ran.