10PM Update: Soccer Team still trapped in flooded cave, search suspended due to rising waters, believed still alive

[Oukiva]

16 hours ago, mochatsubo said:

Stateless and Poor, Some Boys in Thai Cave Had Already Beaten Long Odds //

From Thai news, it seems like there is some kind of petition to ask to give Thai nationality to the coach and at least 3 of the boys who are "stateless" refugees with nearly no rights in Thailand...

Hope it will work 

[javasumatra]

According to the U.K. press, Several of the rescue divers have been awarded free flight to Thailand for life. Nice touch!

[Oukiva]

From workpointnews.com :

Thanks to all those who helped.

[brutox]

Whoa! .. that last quote .. by Saman Kunan, the courageous SEAL the world lost last week .. I know the photo appears retouched, but look into the eyes of this giant, and think about what he stared-down on his final dive .. whoa! .. a powerful image .. deeply touching.

A man of his word, he promised not to give up, and he gave his very last measure .. for kids .. he did not know.

I am not religious, but some truths are universal: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." -- John 13:15

A giant as this is rare anywhere.

[forcebwithu]

Saw this article linked to on another forum.

‘Still Can’t Believe It Worked’: The Story of the Thailand Cave Rescue

Has an excellent graphic of the Cave system showing in good detail the obstacles they faced.

 

Also has a few more details that I hadn't seen mentioned before.

Three Thai SEAL divers went missing during the operation for 23 hours, and when they finally reappeared, they were so weak from a lack of oxygen that they were rushed to the hospital.

Four days after the boys were found, Mr. Saman, the retired Navy SEAL member who left his airport security job to volunteer, died as he was placing air tanks on an underwater supply route. His family declined an autopsy, but some Thai officials said that he ran out of air in his tanks. Others believe he succumbed to hypothermia.

[Oukiva]

Krisna Namulphol’s creations (from left): Surathin Chaichompu, the Thai Water Well Association’s president; hero Saman Kunan, and Narongsak Osottanakorn, the search and rescue operations chief. Photo courtesy of Krisna Namulphol

 

The sculptor "Sam" to mourn the hero of the cave Revealed ... every detail should be worth remembering as a sculpture.

[Oukiva]

Pump teams escorted home in convoy by police,

and celebrated at the arrival like heroes  

Thanks to them.

Media talk about nearly 1 billion litres of water pumped in 2 weeks !

 

[Oukiva]

Graphics from AFP:

[forcebwithu]

Tourism Authority of Thailand released a short video giving thanks to the world for the support and help in rescuing the trapped children and their coach.

 

[Harry Brown]

Here is link to a documentary on the team that got the kids out. Hope it works.

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/out-of-the-dark/10000580

[happy888]

@Harry Brown The link works. Thanks. I watched it earlier this evening. Shows the ‘rescue’ from a different perspective. Brilliant! And the outcome truly miraculous.

[Bobmoore]

 

What the new photo of the Thai Cave boys tells us about their ordeal

The boys gather around a portrait of Saman Kunan, who died in the rescue attempt. Their expressions show a deep recognition of the overwhelming spirit of altruism that saved them.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/news/shortcuts/2018/jul/16/new-photo-thai-cave-boys-ordeal-saman-kunan

[jollygumpster]

Just seen a press conference with all the boys in full football kit, they were all smiling and I'm crying ..... again. Once agained they paid tribute to Saman Kunan.

[Bobmoore]

5 hours ago, jollygumpster said:

Just seen a press conference with all the boys in full football kit, they were all smiling and I'm crying ..... again. Once agained they paid tribute to Saman Kunan.

A lot of misconceptions corrected in this article:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/18/thai-cave-rescue-footballers-and-coach-describe-ordeal

 

Quote

They also revealed that the eventual decision about who should leave the cave first was not based on strength, but decided by the boys themselves. It was based on who lived furthest away from the cave and therefore would have the longest cycle back home.

“The ones whose homes are the furthest went first, so they could tell everyone that the boys were fine,” Ekaphol added.

Most of the boys acknowledged they they had not told their parents where they were going after football practice, and they all expressed remorse for what they had put their parents through.

Chanin said he had spent most of his time in the cave worrying that his parents would punish him for disobeying them. Asked whether he thought it was right for him to be punished, he nodded vigorously. “Yes it is,” he said.

 

 

[Ah dinnae ken]

[rope-a-dope]

1 hour ago, froddo said:

Elon musk, don't get him started on the mars extraction of the boars project.. 

[jollygumpster]

The coach and three team members have been granted citizenship.

[brutox]

8 hours ago, jollygumpster said:

The coach and three team members have been granted citizenship.

Good for these guys .. great news .. unlikely, however, that the hundreds of thousands of stateless refugees subsisting in Thailand for generations will be so fortunate.

This is a story whose film version will merit international distribution .. good move by the Thai government to avoid/minimize attention to their failure to ratify the UNHCR's 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol .. 146 countries ratified them .. for decades, Thailand steadfastly refuses.

The Thai Ministry of Culture attempted an additional level of defense by declaring production of the filmed story would be subject to government approval .. media in Thailand is still subject to government censorship .. so, yeah .. good luck with that when the production is done in Malaysia .. the film might never screen in Thailand, but it eventually will find its way through the Internet.

That control is actually already a right by the Ministry of Culture for any film that is made in Thailand .. this might well be made elsewhere.

A close friend here has an entertainment industry colleague (a director-producer and a long time resident farang) who was a volunteer support diver in the Cave during the rescue .. he was granted production rights by the international rescue divers .. writers are already scripting the story, and funding for pre-production, production and post-production is already committed .. he might have an interesting story to tell, from their perspective.

The AUS ABC documentary that came out a month or so ago already revealed a number of interesting elements to the rescue that the press did not report at the time of the rescue .. worthwhile viewing:

 

I wonder how/if the film producers might depict the status of the stateless refugee situation amongst the rescued team members .. with respect to the refugees stories, I could imagine what they say can be easily controlled by the government now.

Watch for this film .. could be an interesting film, and how it gets produced might be instructive about .. ummm .. well .. just how things work here.

 

[jollygumpster]

brutox, do you know why the thai authorities take this stance?

[Harry Brown]

10 hours ago, jollygumpster said:

brutox, do you know why the thai authorities take this stance?

Please no discussion on politics in Thailand.

[Ah dinnae ken]

Hope this is not a repeat but this is a great video with more Thai input & stuff I had not seen before. Such a great worldwide effort & a great result

 

 

[forcebwithu]

More details on the Cave rescue reported today. What's even more remarkable about the rescue is it's just come out that on day six of the rescue, four Thai water company employees were rescued by the British dive team. Up until now, this had never been reported before. 

Breaking News: British Cave divers also rescued four trapped Thai rescuers in Tham Luang Cave

When Rick Stanton and John Volanthen surfaced in Chamber 3 of Tham Luang Cave on day 6 of the rescue to find four people waiting for them they first thought they’d somehow found the boys of the trapped Wild Boar team. In fact they’d discovered four lost Thai rescuers who had been trapped by the rising floodwaters. In the chaos of the early days of the rescue the absence of the men had been unreported and so had not been noticed by the Thai authorities and or the outside world. What followed was a dramatic and unparalleled “snatch” rescue mission perfectly conceived and executed as they dived the four men through three sumps to safety.

Rick Stanton recounted the story of the rescue in a detailed one and half hour long lecture at Hidden Earth, held at Churchill Academy and Sixth Form in North Somerset, an annual conference for cavers organised by the the British Cave Research Association and the British Caving Association. Many other details of the rescue were also explained to a packed audience.

The Tham Luang rescue began on Saturday 23rd June after the Wild Boars team were reported missing and their bikes were found at the Cave entrance. On day two searchers had penetrated around 1500m into the Cave to the Sam Yaek junction, some way past Chamber 3 which would eventually become the site of the Thai Navy Seal dive base. The British Cave Rescue Council received a request from Thai government on Tuesday June 26th and by late that evening a three man team, Rick Stanton, John Volanthen and Rob Harper were en route to Bangkok on a Thai Airways flight. By this time heavy rain had prevented further searching. They arrived at the rescue site the next day and made a reconnaissance dive towards chamber 3, which was now cut off from the Cave entrance.

 

On the following day, Thursday 28th June and day six of the rescue Rick and John dived the three short sumps to chamber 3. As they surfaced they realised there were people in the chamber. Hoping they’d found the missing boys they soon realised these men were older, it transpired they were Thai water company employees who had not been reported missing and who had been trapped for around twenty four hours, possibly longer. Their situation was desperate, conditions were worsening quickly, there was no communication to the surface and no one, least of all the two divers, knew at at that stage whether Chamber 3 would flood completely.

In the Cave the water was still rising and although the chamber is in part of the show Cave Rick described the diving conditions heading back to the Cave entrance as appalling. As well as low visibility which was to be expected in the flood water the site had become contaminated with diesel after generators installed inside the Cave had been flooded. As they stood in the sumps the muddy water was churning, swirling and eddying around them. The four men were not divers, or even cavers. The two British divers had only their personal equipment, there was nothing spare for the four to use, and no time to return to the entrance for help, more equipment or more divers.

The two found themselves in a completely unexpected situation, faced with a type of rescue never previously attempted they quickly devised a plan to relay the four men through the three sumps and around 700m of “open” passage back to the Cave entrance. Rick explained there were some positives, the sumps were shallow, under 5m deep, fairly short at around 10m long, the water was fairly warm and the four, though scared, were very keen to get out!

The plan was fairly simple, both divers would dive through the first sump, one would dekit and the second would then return through the sump with the spare kit and relay each of the workers through, one at a time. The group would then be escorted back through the Cave to the next sump where the process would be repeated. It’s important to realise that this meant that for long periods one of the two British divers would be exposed to the risk of drowning if a large flood pulse had come through the Cave and flooded the area in which he was waiting, this in addition to the fact that in any dive rescue there is always a risk that the victim will panic, and possibly harm the rescuer or damage his or her equipment. In the history of Cave diving nothing like this had ever been attempted before, and in terms of the number of people rescued the dive ranked (for the next twelve days at least) as the second highest number of people ever rescued by Cave divers from a flooded Cave.

Despite the risks the two divers decided to proceed. It is hard to imagine how disorientating it must be for a non diver to be suddenly immersed in murky brown, fast flowing Cave water, wearing unfamiliar equipment, without a wetsuit, and at one point this was illustrated when Rick experienced a minor problem with his kit just as he submerged at the start of a sump and he had to surface again. His new dive “partner” surfaced with him, jumping out of the water and began running along the passage in the direction he thought his friends must have taken, until Rick stopped him and explained he had to do it all over again. Fortunately eventually the “snatch” rescue went as planned and all four men were safely returned to the surface.

 Rick Stanton at Hidden Earth 2018. Photo: Linda Wilson

Rick highlighted the contributions of overseas divers, including Australians Doctor Richard Harris and Veterinary Surgeon Craig Challen and Belgian diver Ben Reymenants as well as contributions from the surface team, notably Vernon Unsworth. Vernon’s in depth knowledge of the Cave meant he played a key part in the overall rescue, as well as persuading the Thai authorities to contact British divers, his years of observations of flooding in the Cave proved invaluable. At one point, when several hundred rescuers were working in the show Cave section he warned that section of Cave would flood within two to three hours, and advised evacuation. Had he not the casualty count could have been much higher. Vernon also helped persuade the authorities that the flooding in the Cave would take much longer to drop naturally after the end of the monsoon season, and explained that it could be as late as January before the area the boys were trapped in might reopen.

Rick also went on to explain that it took time to build the credibility of the divers with the Thai authorities, understandably as they were being bombarded by suggestions and offers of help from all sides. Both Vernon’s advice and the rescue of the four trapped rescuers played a big part in building the credibility of the dive team, and marked key moments in the process that eventually as we all now know led to the successful dives to free the Wild Boars.

Rick was then joined for a question and answer session by fellow divers John Volanthen, Chris Jewell, Connor Roe and Josh Bratchley. At the end of the lecture Rick received a two minute standing ovation – a chance for cavers to show our appreciation for their efforts.

Les Williams, Chairman of the British Caving Association, commenting today on the rescue of the Thai rescuers said “It’s one of the most remarkable aspects of this whole event that such an amazing thing was a mere side show that never even made the press”.

When we remember and recognise the work of the British Cave divers and Cave divers from other countries in Tham Luang we should recognise not only did they save the thirteen – between them they saved seventeen lives.

source: https://pattayaone.news/en/breaking-news-british-cave-divers/

[Ah dinnae ken]

This is such a brilliant story & this just adds to the legend

[forcebwithu]

I have a minor nitpick about Pattaya One News. Their news report is a straight C&P from the Darkness Below site with no citation of the source of their C&P. Bangkok Post reported the same news, but at least their reporter took the the time to summarize the article with a mention to the Darkness Below site as the source.

Once I had a look at the original source, I saw they had two other very interesting articles on what took place behind the scenes in support of the Cave rescue.  Behind the scenes with the BCRC at the Thai cave rescue – Part One & Part Two. 

Reading these articles makes one appreciate how many more heroes there were in this amazing rescue.

[brutox]

This story still captivates me .. uplifting heroism as this just doesn't have an expiry.

The guy getting the story rights from the divers, rather than the Thai boys, or the Thai Government's Ministry of Get Me Some, has the real wood on this.

The British Cave Rescue Council (BCRC), the interviewees in the above article, has all the direct comms from the men who were the very point of the spear .. unfiltered by the layers between themselves and the Thai governor who was "in charge of the rescue".

I am dying to know the behind the scenes details of the hurdles these heroic men of action had to endure and circumvent, to get past the local customs, culture, practices, even politics and diplomacy it seems, preventing them from making this happen.

The interview reveals some marvelous Thai values exhibited by the non-official participants, but does not reflect well at all on the Thai authorities.

[ Note to self: never trust my life in the hands of Thai officials. ]

Coming to a cinema, near you!

What a great epilogue to an uplifting story that needs to be told.