generalspeaking

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

The Suspenseful Intolerable Wait

"We went in a few kilometres and were able to enter a second chamber behind the entrance. In that chamber, there was an area where I saw shoes and bags left behind on the ground."
"We believe the students have gone further in."
Lt. Naponwath Homsai, Royal Thailand Navy

"I haven't slept and I hope that all of them can come out all safe and sound."
"My son is a strong boy. I still have hope."
Namhom Boonpiam, mother of 13-year-old missing boy

Relatives of the boys and their coach, who are missing in a flooded cave, wait under a tented area for any updates in the search, on Tuesday in Mae Sai, northern Thailand. (Tassanee Vejpongsa/Associated Press)

"[Not explorable from November to June due to flooding, the cave has an] impressive entrance chamber [leading to an easy walk along] spacious passageways [about a kilometre in length]."
"At the end of the marked path the passage enters a series of chambers, boulder collapses and boulder chokes where route finding can be difficult."
Online guidebook, The Caves of Northern Thailand

The cave narrows to a two-metre wide passage, three metres in height. Then it splits into different directions, several passages leading to other chambers, to pools, or to places with lofty "avens", shafts that reach the surface. Its mystique and geology no doubt intriguing to teen-age boys' sense of adventure. Which is how and why a dozen teen-age boys between 11 and 13 years of age, belonging to a soccer team, along with their 25-year-old coach sought to satisfy their curiosity by entering the Tham Luang Nang Non cave on Saturday afternoon.

They parked their bicycles, left their backpacks and entered the cave for an impromptu adventure. But they never emerged. The cave, as so often happens evidently at this time of year, was flooded. And three days later they still haven't emerged, and the flooding continues, the water rising in the caverns. Rescuers brought to the scene speak of five metres of water. They also believe that the missing boys and their coach are still alive.

The Royal Thai Navy has sent rescuers in the hopes of being able to search further into the cave, thought to be about six to eight kilometres in length and in which large chambers are located. But they were unable to penetrate far into the chamber and its pathways. The boys' parents seek shelter in tents close by the cave entrance, staying there overnight, rain pelting down around them. Another nearby tent contains medics. Reminders of the boys' plight are as close as the cave entrance where sit the boys' soccer cleats, backpacks and bicycles.

From time to time mothers enter the mouth of the cave to call out to their children, begging them to appear. Footprints and handprints were discovered within the cave complex. An officer of the district police station felt that the boys are young, strong athletes which should be a factor in their survival. "We're confident that the kids should still be in good condition", said Deputy Governor Passakorn Bunyalak of Chiang Rai, at a news conference.

Special diving skills, supplemental oxygen would be required to access deeper into the flooded cave; conditions that complicate rescue efforts. Speculation is that divers would bring food in to the boys and all would wait out the flood, or be introduced to the basics of scuba diving to enable them to swim out.

Cut into a mountainside in far northern Thailand, the cave is a tourist attraction that severely floods during the rainy season, June to October. However, tourists trapped in the cave in past floods have been rescued once the water receded in a few days' time.

A geographer and expert on the Tham Luang Nang Non cave said that divers went as far as three kilometres into the complex where the cave maintains a stable temperature of about 25C. The only way to get the boys out would be for them to dive, said Anukoon Sorn-ek, the geographer. "But they have to be found first."