Twelve members of a junior football team, aged 11 to 17, and their 25-year-old assistant coach, became stranded in the cave Tham Luang Nang Non (
Efforts to locate them were hampered by rising water levels and strong currents in the cave system. No contact was made for over a week. The rescue effort expanded into a massive operation amid intense worldwide media coverage and public interest. On July 2, after advancing through narrow passages and muddy waters, British divers found all of the missing group members alive on an elevated rock about 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi) from the cave mouth. Rescue organizers discussed various options to extract the group: whether to teach them basic diving skills to enable their early rescue, wait until a new entrance was found or drilled, or wait for the floodwaters to subside at the end of the monsoon season months later. After days of pumping water from the cave system and a respite from rain, the rescue teams hastened to get everyone out before the next monsoon rain, which was expected to bring a potential 52 mm (2.0 in) of additional rainfall and was predicted to start around 11 July. Between 8 and 10 July, all of the boys and their coach were rescued from the cave, with four of them being escorted out on each day.
Over 1,000 people were involved in the rescue operation, including Thai Navy SEALs and volunteers and technical assistance teams from multiple countries. One death occurred during the rescue: Saman Kunan, a 38-year-old former Thai SEAL, asphyxiated on 5 July while attempting to pass through a narrow passageway on return to the cave entrance after delivering supplies of air to the interior.
Disappearance
Tham Luang Nang Non is a karstic cave complex beneath Doi Nang Non, a mountain range on the border between
On 23 June 2018, a group of twelve boys aged between 11 and 16 from a local junior football team named the Wild Boars and their 25-year-old coach, Ekapol Chantawong, went missing after setting out to explore the cave. They planned to have a picnic to celebrate the 17th birthday of one of the boys, Peerapat Sompiangjai. The group was apparently stranded in the tunnels by sudden and continuous rainfall after they had entered the cave. A ranger of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation alerted authorities to the missing group after seeing their unclaimed belongings at the cave entrance.
Search and Contact
Military divers searched the cave. A Thai Navy SEAL diver said the water was so murky that even with lights they could not see where they were going underwater. After continuous rain, which further flooded the cave entrance, the search had to be periodically interrupted. After four days, the Thai Navy SEALs were joined by a group of 30 personnel of the United States Indo-Pacific Command, and by British cave diving rescue experts Richard Stanton, John Volanthen, and Robert Harper, who brought Heyphone LF radios borrowed from the Derbyshire Cave Rescue Organisation.
Policemen with sniffer dogs searched for shaft openings that could provide alternative entrances to the cave branches below. Drones and robots were used to improve the search effort; however, no technology currently exists to scan for people deep underground.
The twelve boys and the coach were discovered, all alive, on 2 July, at approximately 22:00 by Stanton and Volanthen, whose efforts were overseen from outside by Harper. The group was found on a narrow rock shelf about 400 metres (1,300 ft) beyond the "
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