‘Essentially diving in coffee’: Australian diver among team rushing to rescue people trapped in flooded Laos cave | Laos

An Australian cave diver is part of an international team that pulled a man alive from a remote flooded cave in Laos; The rescue operation for six more people still trapped underground continues.

A man was brought back alive from the labyrinthine cave complex late Friday. Four people were trapped on a rocky ledge approximately 300 meters from the cave entrance, while two people’s names remain unknown and have not yet been found.

The men in the cave are weak from hunger and some have wounds.

The group entered the cave in Xaysomboun province in central Laos more than a week ago to hunt wildlife and pan for gold, but heavy rain blocked the entrance to the cave. Five of them were found alive this week, but they had lost contact with two others in the cave system. Rescuers, some of whom took part in the rescue of a young Thai football team in 2018, must pull survivors from submerged passages.

“The first one is out. Safe and sound!!!” Manat Artmongkron, a rescue technician for the Saithan Saphanboon Foundation, a Thai rescue group, wrote in a Facebook post that the first man was brought from the cave on Friday.

In the video posted on social media, a man covered in mud can be seen climbing from the cave to safety. He was greeted with some cheers and wrapped in an emergency blanket.

Rescue efforts continue.

Kengkard Bongkawong, head of operations for Metta Tham Rescue, a Thai group, said on social media that the search for the two missing men would be even more difficult, with teams having to pass through a narrow 30-meter tunnel, checking for any intersections along the road. “The next mission will be harder,” he wrote.

Pulling out survivors will also be difficult due to low oxygen supplies, more rain and the trapped people’s lack of diving experience.

On Friday, divers with special skills to cope with the extremely cramped conditions in the cave were flown in from around the world. They will be flown by a military helicopter to the remote and hostile jungle terrain where the men are trapped.

Australian cave diver Josh Richards, who led a cave exploration team of Soggy Wombats, a marsupial known for digging in Australia, flew in on Friday to help with the rescue operation.

“It looks like it’s pretty dire,” Richards said. “We often deal with clay and mud walls, which are particularly unstable and uncomfortable. Mud and clay are also [affects] This; you actually dive into the coffee. You won’t see anything through it.

“This is all done by touching and feeling, following the lines laid down in the mine.”

Richards said he was not a “physically large man.” He said his fellow international divers, who were asked to support the rescue team, said “we’re all pretty small, we’re pretty light, and we spend a fair amount of time stuck in little places underground.”

“With a regulator in my mouth, I’m very comfortable underwater, twisting and turning and doing all these little things, especially twisting myself to get into bad places,” he said. “And unfortunately, this mine appears to be one of them.”

Other diving experts reportedly came from Japan, Indonesia, Thailand and France. A diver from Malaysia joined the mission on Thursday.

Richards stated that the rescue plan is currently being developed among divers and said, “This will be as safe as possible for everyone involved. There are a lot of different ideas going around.”

Richards said the team on the ground was also trying to pump out as much water as possible in a two-pronged approach, as sections of the tunnel between the miners and the surface were completely flooded.

“If they can’t pump all that water out and some sections are completely submerged, so … we need to be there to potentially get these people through short sections where they’re going to use scuba equipment,” he said, “and they’ve almost certainly never used scuba equipment before in their lives.”

For those familiar with the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue operation in Thailand, Richards said there were similarities but also “glaring differences.”

The Laos cave is a “considerably” smaller area in terms of the length and physical size of the tunnel. Tham Luang cave is kilometers long and has numerous air chambers where rescuers can set up base stations. Thai rescuers were able to pump out large amounts of water, but they were also dealing with much more water.

“This area is about 350 meters long. It’s much, much smaller, but at the same time, the actual tunnels that we’re trying to squeeze into are much smaller again,” Richards said.

“So there are similarities in it being a group of people who are not trained cave divers but are trapped in a cave, and flooding is a concern, but it’s a completely different environment we’re dealing with, and also not dealing with kids is another factor.”

Heavy machinery is being used to clear the way into the cave area so the equipment can be moved more easily.

Additional reporting by Rebecca Ratcliffe