Today’s topic is one of the most amazing survival stories in recent history. The story of the youth soccer team in Thailand that got trapped deep in the Tham Luang cave system underneath the Sleeping Lady Mountain and the incredible two-week rescue effort that ensued, which involved over 10,000 people, including 200 rescue divers from over 100 different government agencies both national and international.
Background
This story all started on June 23rd 2018 in the Chiang Rai province of Thailand, which is the northernmost province of the country, and shares a border with Myanmar (formerly Burma), and Laos.
A local youth soccer team named The Wild Boars, consisting of boys ranging in age from 11 to 17, had just finished soccer practice. It was a special day though, at least for one of the boys, informally named Night, as it was his birthday and he was turning 17.
So together with their 25 year old assistant coach, Ekkaphol “Coach Ake” Chanthawong, 12 of the boys decided to have an impromptu birthday party after practice. So, they rode their bikes to the Tham Luang cave for a little fun and exploration. They left their bikes and bags at the mouth of the cave, and headed inside.
Cave Background
Now, just a little bit about the cave itself. It’s full name is Tham Luang Khun Nam Nang Non “the great cave and water source of the sleeping lady mountain” (Mountain looks like a lady laying on her back).
The Tham Luang cave is the 4th largest cave system in all of Thailand. The cave stretches 10 km (or 6 miles for you Americans) directly underneath the mountains that separate Thailand and Myanmar. There are many deep recesses in the cave, along with narrow crawl spaces and passages which can make exploring it pretty tricky in certain spots. And people have been known to go missing in the caves before.
But that being said, the cave system is actually a very popular destination and attracts many people, including the boys and their assistant coach, who had been there several times in the past. They’d even adventured as far as 8km or 5 miles into the cave. In fact, they had a ritual where any time a new member joined the soccer team, they’d venture into the cave so the person could carve their name on the wall.
And another key detail about the cave, is a sign posted outside the entrance. It warns that the cave is closed from July to November each year for monsoon season, because the cave floods and becomes extremely dangerous.
But since it was not yet July, the cave was still open for exploration, so in they went.
Back Home
Back home, no one was aware of any issues for a while. In fact, no one even knew they went to the cave. Night’s family had been preparing his birthday party and had decorated and wrapped his presents.
But around 7 at night, the Head Coach and founder of the Wild Boars, Nopparat Khanthawong, checked his phone, and found over 20 missed calls from parents worried that their children never returned home from soccer practice. He immediately knew something was wrong. After making some inquiries, he spoke to one of the children who was picked up after soccer practice instead of going to the caves, and learned of the boys’ plan to go cave exploring.
So the head coach raced up to the cave entrance, where he found all of the boys’ bikes and bags, and saw muddy water flowing out of the cave. He immediately knew the team was in trouble so he contacted authorities, which kicked off one of the greatest rescue efforts ever conducted.
Back in the Cave
The boys and their assistant coach had had their fun exploring, but when they attempted to turn back and exit the way they came, they realized they were in big trouble.
It had been raining the last few days, not monsoon-type rain, but raining nevertheless. And while they were in the cave, that rain water began draining off the mountain and down into the cave, which was filling up very quickly. And to escape the rising water, they actually had to scramble deeper into the cave, because some of the tight passages they used to get down in there, were already completely flooded.
About 4km into the cave, they found themselves stranded on a rocky shelf in complete darkness, save for a few flashlights. They used rocks to dig out a small cavern into the wall of the shelf so they could huddle together and stay warm but other than that, they were basically helpless. They had only planned on being in the cave for about an hour so they barely had any supplies, and what little sustenance they brought, they were forced to ditch it while they were escaping the rising water.
Unaware that anyone even knew where they were, fear and panic must’ve set in for the boys. Just imagine being in the cold darkness, deep inside of a flooding cave, with little hope of ever seeing the light of day again. It scares me just to think about it.
They did have a few saving graces inside the cave though. First was that Coach Ake was a former monk. So he taught the boys meditation techniques to help keep them calm. And in addition to quelling fear and panic, this meditation actually had the real benefits of controlling their breathing to conserve oxygen, and keeping them still to conserve energy and strength.
Second, the moisture dripping from the walls was actually drinkable water as it was filtered through the limestone, so they were able to use this to hydrate.
Third, the porous limestone walls allowed for some air exchange which improved their oxygen supply. So all things considered, they actually had been gifted some pretty favorable conditions for survival. At least for the time being.
Commencement of the Rescue mission
Back on the surface a rescue plan was quickly coming together. Several agencies were called in to assist with the rescue operation including the Thai Navy Seals and the national police, among other agencies and volunteers. The Seals began searching the cave but said the water was so murky, there was absolutely zero visibility. And even the Seals, who had extensive diving experience, weren’t well versed in cave diving, which is a totally different beast altogether. They knew additional help was needed.
It just so happened that a British Cave Diver named Vern Unsworth, who lives in Chiang Rai and has detailed knowledge of the Tham Luang cave complex, was planning to make a solo venture into the cave on 24 June, the day after the boys went missing, when he received a call about the missing boys. He immediately advised the Thai Authorities to request the assistance of the BCRC, the British Cave Rescue Council.
Finally, on June 28th, international help arrived. International assistance included UK rescue teams from the British Cave Rescue Council, several squadrons from the U.S. Air Force including special tactics and rescue specialists, a team of Special Response Group divers from the Australian Federal Police, a team of Chinese Divers from the Beijing Peaceland Foundation, and cave divers and agencies from several other countries all over the world. Absolutely incredible.
Cave Entrance
At the cave entrance, a full base of operations had been set up including a field hospital, volunteer food vendors, toilets, an area for press, a main base for rescuers and dive teams, and a private area designated specifically for families of the missing boys.
And at this point, news of the missing boys had made international headlines so the press was giving play-by-play live updates of all the rescue efforts as they were unfolding in real time. Vigils were being performed by family and friends of the boys, and eventually expanded out into the schools the boys attended as well as the communities in which they lived. There were prayer groups, songs were sung into the cave, and donations of money, food and clothing poured in for the families, and rescuers. As the sense of community grew, so did the rescue efforts.
The problem was they still had no idea where the boys could possibly be in the cave, or if they were even still alive, and with monsoon season approaching quickly, time for successful rescue was running out…if it hadn’t already.
Making Contact
But on July 1st, over a week after the boys had gone missing, divers reached a large cavernous area of the cave which they dubbed “Chamber 3” which was set up as a dive base for the remainder of the rescue operations.
Two BCRC divers named Richard Stanton and Johnathon Volanthen had been searching the cave for a few days at this point and had been laying guidelines to help navigate through the murky waters. That same day though on July 1st, the rainfall increased which worsened the conditions even more and caused strong water currents, and further reduced visibility. This forced them to call off their search efforts until the weather improved.
With no idea where the boys were in the intricate cave system and time running out, authorities decided to consult the boy who originally notified the Head Coach of the team’s plans to explore the cave. He explained that they’d visited a place in the cave several times before called Pattaya Beach, so the divers decided to focus their search in this area.
Luckily, the weather improved the following day and so on July 2nd, Stanton and Volanthen resumed their search and headed for Pattaya Beach.
When they reached the Pattaya Beach Chamber, they were disappointed to find no sign of the boys or their coach. But as they continued past the chamber, they finally made the discovery they had been looking for.
Stanton and Volanthen popped out of the water in an area that hadn’t yet been completely flooded, and to their amazement, there were all the boys and their coach huddled on the ledge!
Stanton asked, “How many of you?” and someone answered in English, “Thirteen.”
So after more than a week they finally made contact, and thankfully they were all still alive.
The divers spent some time with the boys trying to help ease their fears and reassure them, then they left them with some new flashlights and promised they’d return with food.
Footage of the initial encounter was shared with the families and the media, and there was immediate worldwide relief and celebration of the incredible discovery.
But That Was Just the Beginning
There’s no doubt this was a huge milestone in the rescue operation, but with the monsoons only days away and the cave system already mostly flooded, safely extracting the soccer team was going to be difficult and dangerous. The boys were over 4km into the cave and 800m below the surface. Not to mention that some of the boys couldn’t even swim…
The following day, three Thai Navy Seal Divers, including a SEAL trained doctor reunited with the boys and stayed with them for the rest of the ordeal. They did medical checks, brought drinking water and food to the group which consisted of easily digestible high energy liquid nutrition prescribed by the doctor, and also emergency blankets to help them keep warm. They also brought them wet note pads so they could write messages to their friends and families.
Rescue Challenges
Still without a solid rescue plan, there were several crucial factors rescuers needed to consider.
From the beginning, rescuers had to battle the rising water levels in the already mostly flooded cave. They built a stone diversion dam and set up several water pumps to help remove water. By July 4th, the pumps were removing an estimated 420,000 gallons of water per hour, completely flooding all of the nearby farmland. All in all they removed over a billion gallons of water from the cave, and they still couldn’t keep up. And to make matters worse, the weather forecast called for heavy rains to move in on July 8th, which could potentially flood the area where the boys were trapped.
Travel time was another factor. While travelling into the cave toward the boys, it took even the most experienced divers six hours to reach their location as they were travelling against the water current. And even with the current upon exiting the cave, it still took a full five hours to reach the exit.
Then on July 6th, rescuers detected a drop in the oxygen levels in the cave, which they feared would cause the boys to develop hypoxemia. A normal oxygen level is about 21%, and they detected a drop in the cave down to 15%, so this increased the urgency of the rescue even further.
First Death
In the early morning hours of July 6th, former Thai Navy Seal 37 year old Petty Officer 1st Class Suman Kunan, made a dive from Chamber 3 and delivered three oxygen tanks to the group. On the return journey however, Kunan lost consciousness underwater. His dive partner attempted CPR and then brought him back to Chamber 3 where CPR was reinitiated, but ultimately unsuccessful. Kunan was pronounced dead.
Kunan is regarded as one of the heroes of the rescue mission and he was posthumously promoted to Lieutenant Commander by the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Navy. His Funeral was held on July 14th and was attended by the Thai Royal Family.
This tragedy really highlighted the dangers of the rescue mission going forward.
Rescue Options
With the rains moving in and oxygen levels dropping, a rescue plan needed to be developed NOW. They came up with a list of several options, some reasonable, and some very impractical.
The first option to buy rescuers a little time was to run oxygen supply lines to the boys to help combat the low oxygen levels. Thai military engineers began working on this but quickly abandoned it as way to impractical.
The next option was to just wait out monsoon season while continuing to pump water out of the cave and have divers bring supplies to the trapped group. Keep in mind monsoon season lasts 4 months. This plan was also abandoned for fears the cave would completely flood out when the heavy rains hit.
Another option was to teach the boys basic diving skills and then guide them out of the cave. As I previously mentioned though, some of the boys didn’t even know how to swim and the journey in and out of the cave was tumultuous enough for even some of the world’s most experienced cave divers. So they scrapped that plan as well.
Another promising option was to drill a rescue shaft through the mountain down into the cave. Engineers actually drilled over 100 shafts down into the limestone, but unfortunately, they couldn’t find an adequate spot for a rescue shaft. So they were forced to abandon this plan as well.
Along with many other options, tech tycoons also offered their assistance, including Elon Musk who offered to build a child-sized submarine to safely get the boys out, but rescuers dismissed this as wildly impractical.
With both time and ideas running out, rescuers eventually decided the most viable option was to manually extract the boys one at a time with a team of experienced divers. In preparation for the actual rescue attempt, the divers who would be participating in the mission actually practiced in a swimming pool with local boys. Mockups of tight passages were created with the use of chairs and other furniture, and the divers had to navigate the boys through the pool.
The Rescue
On July 8th, over two weeks after the boys went missing, the rains from the previous days stopped and rescuers took this as their opportunity begin the rescue effort. So they made an announcement for media and volunteers to clear the mouth of the cave, and they got to work.
And the process of this rescue is truly incredible. Each 2 person rescue dive team would be assigned to a boy, and over 90 other cave divers were strategically positioned at various points along the route to provide medical checks and resupply oxygen. The boys and their coach would be rescued one at a time, at about 45 minute intervals.
There was some speculation about how they decided who to rescue first, whether it was the strongest, the weakest, or some other factor, but when interviewed about it after the fact, the rescuers chose the boys simply based on who volunteered. And apparently the boys, who had no idea how big of an international event this was on the surface, still thought they’d need to ride their bikes home when they got out of the cave. So they ended up deciding that whoever lived farthest away should be rescued first…
So one by one, each boy was fitted with a wet suit, a full face mask, and their oxygen tank strapped to their rescuer’s chest. They also had a handle on their back so they could be navigated through the cave by the diver, and they were referred to as “the package.” for the remainder of the operation.
But one of the main concerns for the extraction, was that if a boy began to panic while in route, this could spell disaster for both the boy and the rescuer. So it was decided to bring in Australian Anesthesiologist Dr. Richard Harris as part of the dive team to heavily sedate the boys for the journey. He and two medical assistants were granted diplomatic immunity in case anything went wrong with the anesthetic. So just before each boy was taken by a rescuer, they were sedated with Ketamine, which is a powerful tranquilizer that lasts roughly an hour. Dr. Harris also trained other members of the rescue team how to re-sedate the boys when needed since each extraction would be a several hour ordeal.
While in route, divers monitored that the boys were breathing via exhaust bubbles from their mask during the journey, and the boys’ gear was removed for further health assessments at various dry points, and then refitted.
As I previously mentioned, there was zero visibility throughout much of the dive route, so the rescuers relied on the guidelines to move ahead. And some of the passages were barely big enough for even one person to maneuver through, which required the divers to actually unstrap their own oxygen tanks so they’d fit. Combine this with the fact that they were tethered to an unconscious boy and this rescue mission is just mind-blowing.
Once the boys were finally delivered to Chamber 3, they were strapped to a stretcher and then navigated the rest of the way out of the cave by being carried and via a pully system which was installed by experienced rock climbers.
One by one over 2 days, all of the boys and their coach were rescued from the cave and immediately transported to the hospital.
Once the last of them were out, the 3 SEALs and the Army doctor who had been accompanying the boys, made their exit. 3 of the 4 divers successfully made it to chamber 3 when suddenly the water pumps stopped working and the water levels in the cave began rising rapidly. Over 100 rescuers were still in the cave, including the 4th diver. He made it to Chamber 3 just as everyone was quickly fleeing the flooding cave. All the remaining rescue equipment was abandoned as the water levels rose, and everyone made it out just in the knick of time.
Rescue mission complete…
Recovery
Overall, the boys and their coach each lost an average of about 4 ½ pounds while down in the cave. They were all listed in “good condition” though. Over the next 10 days, the boys were slowly reintroduced solid food starting with rice porridge. They were quarantined pending test results to see if they caught any infectious diseases while down in the cave. And they all wore sunglasses at first while their eyes adjusted to the light. They all had an increased WBC count and some had minor respiratory infections, so the entire team was administered antibiotics but beyond that, they all seemed to be in pretty good shape.
Backlash/Reactions
As you might remember, there was a lot of mixed reactions about Coach Ake’s role in this situation. Many of the negative reactions came from the western media, and suggested he should face criminal charges for leading the boys down into the cave. Local officials also considered filing negligence charges against him, though this never happened.
I must admit, I even initially faulted the coach for leading the boys down into the cave, but after more thought, I changed my mind. This wasn’t a new thing for them. Remember they explored these caves all the time, and it was a very popular destination. Not to mention the cave was still open for exploration as it wasn’t July yet.
And Vern Unsworth, the British caver who initially responded, explained that no one was to blame for the situation. He’s quoted as saying “Nobody’s to blame, not the coach, not the boys. They were just very unlucky … It wasn’t just the rain that day, the mountain is like a sponge and waters from earlier rain were raising the levels”
He also pointed out that he was planning on making a trek into the cave the following day before he got the call about the boys so it easily could’ve been him who had gotten stuck in there.
Also very telling was the parents’ reaction to the whole ordeal. Nobody blamed Coach Ake at all and in fact, many of them praised how he conducted himself while down there.
When asked if they would consider filing charges against him for negligence, one of the parents is quoted as saying “We would never do that…the boys love their coach…and we as parents don’t want it either. Coach Ekk has been good to my boy, and now I hear how he gave them hope, and kept them calm for so many days without food. I have great admiration for him.”
And several other parents and community members share the same sentiment.
I’m sure nobody was harder on Coach Ake than Coach Ake himself though.
Good that Came of It
After this harrowing 2-week ordeal, there was actually a lot of good that came out of it. Besides the unifying phenomenon that brought the international community together, Several other things changed for the better as well.
To start, 3 of the boys as well as Coach Ake were previously stateless, meaning they had no nationality. To clarify, there are several tribes that share borders between Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and China. These borders are not very well defined. The boys and their coach are from various tribes and had no citizenship and were therefore deprived of several basic rights and were unable to leave the Chiang Rai province. This often posed a problem when the team travelled to play soccer matches outside the province. After this ordeal, they were all granted Thai citizenship.
The team was also recognized by the FIFA organization and was invited to the World Cup Final. They were also recognized by several pro soccer clubs throughout the world. They were even invited by the International Olympic Committee to attended the opening ceremonies for the 2018 Summer youth games in Buenos Aires.
And several rescuers and rescue teams were awarded honors and promotions by their respective countries following the cave rescue, and multiple movies have been filmed about this story, one of which featured many of the actual cave divers as themselves.
And regarding the Thai Navy SEALs, they added a comprehensive cave diving program to their training to be better prepared in case a situation like this happened again.
And that is the incredible story of the rescue of the Thai youth soccer team and their assistant coach, from the Tham Laung Cave in Thailand!