A member of the Thai rescue team in Laos has admitted that it is almost impossible for the five Laotian miners trapped inside a flooded cave to get out by SCUBA diving, because they have no cave diving experience and the flooded tunnel stretches for about 30 metres.
Chakkrit Taengtang said that the rescue team have decided to send a small team into the cave this afternoon to resume the search for two other missing people, while stepping up efforts to pump water out of the cave. Mountain climbers are also looking for vents, via which they could get to the chamber holding the trapped miners.
Meanwhile, Laotian authorities have deployed heavy machinery to cut a road through the thick jungle to the cave entrance, to facilitate the movement of supplies and heavy equipment needed for the rescue mission.
According to Chakkrit, a reservoir will be built to store water pumped out of the cave.
Meanwhile, a Malaysian expert in cave diving, identified as Lee Kian Lee, is on his way from Vientiane, the Laotian capital, to the mine in Xaysomboun province to join the extraction operations.
Mikko Paasi, a Finnish cave diver who joined the international search and rescue team at Khun Nam Nang Noon in Chiang Rai about eight years ago, is reported to have said that the team have searched about 95 percent of the flooded cave and still have not found any trace of the two missing people.
He said it is possible that only five were trapped inside the flooded cave to start with.
Meanwhile, it is reported that many Laotians have provided support to the rescuers. One well known social media influencer, identified as ‘Je Norm’, has offered to carry food and drinking water to the cave entrance, despite the difficult and muddy terrain.
Another influencer, ‘Win William’, has donated about 150,000 baht for the purchase of water pumps and hoses for use in the rescue operation.
