A rescue team racing to save seven people trapped for days in a cave in Laos is getting closer to reaching them, the head of the operation said, after breaking through 15 metres of obstacles in a day.
The seven entered the cave in central Xaisomboun province, about 125 kilometres northeast of Vientiane, on May 20 but got trapped by a landslide triggered by heavy rain, according to a local rescue group and the state-run Laophattana News.
They are trapped in a chamber more than 100 metres from the cave entrance, according to Kengkard Bongkawong, the head of Metta Tham Rescue, a Thai organisation invited by the Lao government to join the rescue effort. It was not clear what the group’s condition was.
The 26-member Thai rescue team joined the operation on Sunday and reported significant progress towards reaching the chamber where the group was trapped.
“From this moment on, I believe our success is not far away,” Mr Kengkard said in a social media post on Monday.
The team is working alongside a local group, Laos Rescue Volunteers for People, which said the seven people had entered the cave looking for gold. The country’s disaster agency could not be reached for comment.
Video posted on the Facebook page of Laophattana News showed rescuers in helmets crawling through tight spaces under torchlight, gasping for breath, and others wading slowly through muddy, chest-high waters deep into the cave.
The team includes Finnish cave diver Mikko Paasi and Thai diver Norrased “Ben” Palasing, who were involved in the 17-day operation that saved members of the Wild Boars football club from a flooded mountain cave in northern Thailand in 2018.
The operation at the Tham Luang cave complex in Chiang Rai attracted specialists from around the world, including US military personnel and Thai Navy SEALs.
The rescue team is working to pump out water and supply air, while geotechnical engineers recommend searching for the point where water is seeping in, finding ways to block it, and locating the cave’s cavities. The difficulty lies in the narrow interior, which is a one-way path.
For the rescuers, “It’s like crawling through a drinking straw,” Mr Kengkard said in a social media post on Monday. “If it rains, the water level will rise quickly. Finding a suitable place to store tanks is impossible because even just squeezing through is difficult.”
He said a survey of the site found four shafts that could potentially connect to the cave system and provide an additional route for the rescue.
“We estimate that less than 20 metres remain before we reach the key target area,” he said.
The operation involves around 100 personnel from Laos and Thailand, including soldiers, divers, medics and civilian volunteers at the site in Long Chanh district.
“We still do not know whether there are any signs of life or if they are still alive,” said Bounkham Luanglat, president of the rescue association.
People regularly visit the cave looking for gold, despite repeated warnings from authorities not to enter it, he said.
