Re: "Hope lives on as cave rescue crisis unfolds", (Opinion, June 30).
The intense media interest, multifaceted and uncoordinated rescue efforts, visiting VIPs, and mobs of gawkers and well-wishers at the Tham Luang Cave, where 12 boys and their football coach remain trapped, risks repeating an unfortunate chapter of history.
By many accounts, the most notorious cave entrapment and subsequent rescue attempt occurred in 1925 in Sand Cave, Kentucky, USA, when Floyd Collins became trapped in a narrow passage by a 7-kilogramme rock that fell and pinned his leg. Despite rescue teams locating Collins after just one day, and even being able to communicate with him, they were unable to extricate him from the tight passage because they could not reach past him.
The rescue operation became a national sensation and the scene took on a circus-like atmosphere, with multiple and competing rescue efforts, hundreds of media, hawkers selling food and souvenirs, and visiting dignitaries. At the height of the operations, "tourists" attracted to the scene numbered in the tens of thousands.
The rescue team finally reached Collins after two weeks of digging, but Collins had already succumbed three of four days earlier. Most analysts believe the uncoordinated nature of the rescue efforts and confusion created by thousands of "tourists", well-wishers, media and dignitaries led to ineffective rescue work and the unnecessary death of the Collins, who became memorialised as "the greatest cave explorer ever known".
Kong Rithdee's article on the Tham Luang Cave rescue operations correctly warns of the potentially disastrous results of unnecessary visitors and VIPs flocking to the cave site. Let's all hope and pray for a positive outcome, different from that which sadly played out in Kentucky nearly a century ago.
Samanea Saman
A chaotic response
Thank you Khun Kong Rithdee for your thoughtful comments.
Let's be blunt though, what lets people down time and time again is officialdom. When you have an entrenched system whereby positions are not obtained or retained through skill and ability but money or connections, officialdom will not be competent.
Officials will, however, strive to give the appearance of competency by taking control, issuing pronouncements, making appearances. Hence we have a situation which no one in Thailand is trained to manage but for which expertise exists overseas. A competent official would have recognised this immediately, brought in the experts within 24 hours, and handed control to someone with the experience. Instead we have a chaotic and muddled response.
Farang
Chiang Mai
Trump 'derangement'
Re: "Trump that one", (Postbag, June 30).
Christy K Sweet appears to have been "schooled in early 20th century European history", using her own words, by a loony left conspiracy theorist writing on gay personals website Hornet.com, and unfortunately for her, it shows.
Ms Trump was born in Slovenia in 1970, which had been part of communist Yugoslavia for 25 years, in the western part that was annexed by Italy in 1918 then submitted to a brutal campaign of fascist italianisation under Mussolini. How fascist odes had been retained in a communist country founded by anti-fascist resistants, I let you imagine.
Funnily enough, Matt Keely, whom Ms Sweet has learnt her history from, suggests that Ms Trump must have known the fascist meaning of "Me ne frego" (I don't care) because, I kid you not, her father had been a member of the League of Communists of Slovenia which had fought the fascists!
I suppose he was singing fascist lullabies to her.
A clear case of "Trump derangement syndrome!"
Baffled reader
Food row is boring
Re: "Halal airline rage soars", (PostBag, July 1).
There is a simple solution for Peter Atkinson: Grow your own, for whatever you eat. If you cannot grow it, don't eat it. If you travel, bring your own food with you to eat. Problem solved. Now, go back to sleep and leave the rest of us out of your petty problem while you ponder a way to solve it.
Vasserbuflox
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