Rescue teams involved in the search for the seven miners trapped in a cave in Laos have confirmed that one of them was rescued this Friday, nine days after their disappearance. The rescue took place two days after five of the seven people trapped since May 20 in a cave in Long Chaeng, in central Laos, which was flooded after heavy rains last week, were located. The whereabouts of the other two members of the group are still unknown.
“The first person has been rescued and is coming out of the cave,” said Thai rescuer Kengkard Bongkawong in a Facebook message, without providing further details of the operation. In messages prior to the latest rescue, the rescuer noted that the five trapped were in “a delicate state of health”: “Rescuing them through a narrow passage of hundreds of meters, which requires diving, is extremely difficult.” The rescue team stated that the operation represented a “huge challenge.”
“To ensure maximum safety, we must be cautious and plan meticulously until [the miners] are safely out of the cave,” Kengkard emphasized. “It is very unrealistic to expect them to learn to dive in such a short time (…) the fastest and safest method is to pump out the water from the flooded areas,” he explained before the rescue of the first of the five trapped was confirmed. He also acknowledged that the biggest challenge lies in a stretch of about 30 meters due to the narrow flooded passage that divers crawl through on the floor.
On May 20, the group of seven miners, originally from the Laotian province of Xaisomboun, entered the cave in search of gold deposits, a common activity in this region of the country, but they became trapped when the cavity flooded and landslides blocked the exit.
On Wednesday, when they had been missing for a week, rescuers located five of them. The operation, which on Friday was joined by speleologists from France, Australia, Japan, and Indonesia, is finalizing preparations to try to evacuate the other miners who have been found after pumping out much of the accumulated water with pumps and hoses.
This rescue mission is reminiscent of the high-profile operation that saved the 13 members of the Wild Boars youth soccer team in the Tham Luang cave in Thailand in 2018, a mission that attracted international attention and was depicted in movies, documentaries, and books, and in which two of the rescuers participating in the current mission also took part.
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