The first four soccer players rescued from the Thailand cave were at the hospital on Sunday, military and local officials said. But it will be hours — from 10 to 20, according to the search chief — before other boys can start the trip. Divers will be replacing air tanks and supplies along their route until then.
The first four soccer players rescued from the Thailand cave were at the hospital on Sunday, military and local officials said. But it will be hours — from 10 to 20, according to the search chief — before other boys can start the trip. Divers will be replacing air tanks and supplies along their route until then.
The rescues came as heavy monsoon rains returned to the area, after days of relative respite. Experts say the rain will not immediately make water levels rise within the cave, but it greatly increases the urgency of the operation.
In the town of Mae Sai, where the trapped boys’ soccer team is based, residents and family members were cheering the sound of every helicopter and ambulance they heard, in an uproar of celebration at the news that boys were leaving the cave Sunday.
“I am so happy!” said Kamon Chanthapun, an adviser to the boys’ team, the Wild Boars. “I was so worried because they are just children, stuck for so long in the dark.”
Young men rode in the back of flatbed trucks, cruising the streets and cheering.
Mae Sai is a town that thrives on border commerce. Some residents have relatives across the border in Myanmar, and thousands cross over from that country each day to work, trade or attend school in Thailand.
One of the boys in the cave, Adul Sam-on, is a student at the Ban Wiang Phan school here. Inside, students had written messages on heart-shaped sticky notes placed up in a big heart shape on a bulletin board with optimistic messages. “Hopefully our friend can come out safely,” read one.
Adul was the boy who spoke to British divers in English in the video that announced to the world that the team had finally been found, after 10 days stuck in the flooded Tham Luang Cave.
The head coach for the soccer team, Nopparat Khanthawong, who did not enter the cave with the others two weeks ago, said: “I’m happy that children are coming out. All I can do is to send my prayers and support to the children and rescuers.”
He added: “We don’t know the physical condition of the boys. Please keep them coming!”
— Hannah Beech and Muktita Suhartono, in Mae Sai
— ‘Today, everything was smooth’
Four of the players have safely made the harrowing underwater passage out of the cave and were at the hospital, the head of search operations, Narongsak Osottanakorn, said at a news conference Sunday night.
He said there would be a delay of at least 10 hours until other boys were rescued, to allow time for more air tanks and gear to be replaced along their route.
Narongsak, who until a few days ago was also the provincial governor, said that 10 cave divers accompanied the boys all through the journey. “They hugged the boys beneath them while they were wearing full-face masks,” he said.
The plan had been for the first boy to emerge around 9 p.m. local time, but things went more quickly: the first came out at around 5:40 p.m., he said. The fourth emerged around 7:50.
“Today, everything was very smooth,” he said. “We have been practicing for the past three to four days, rain or shine.”
The Facebook page for the Thai navy SEALs announced that “Wild Boar No. 4 is out of the cave,” in a reference to the team’s mascot name, the Wild Boars.
A Facebook Messenger group organized by some of the parents of the players identified two of the rescued players. One, Mongkol Boonpiam, was said to among those ailing the worst. The other player was identified as Prajak Sutham.
Others were reported to have made progress along the cave network. Experts said the journey from the boys’ cavern to the cave entrance, including long passages completely submerged in murky, rushing water, takes even the best cave divers in the world six hours to navigate.
— Richard C. Paddock and Muktita Suhartono, near Tham Luang Cave
— Why can’t the boys swim?
A Thai official has said that some members of the boys’ soccer team trapped in the flooded Tham Luang Cave network don’t know how to swim, further complicating the rescue effort.
In Southeast Asia, not knowing how to swim is normal.
A key reason is that many mothers in the region believe that teaching their children to swim will increase the risk of them drowning, said Michael Linnan, the technical director at the Alliance for Safe Children, a nonprofit based in Atlanta that has worked extensively in the region.
Linnan said it was not uncommon to see rates of swimming in low- and middle-income countries that is “well below” 20 percent, even among sailors, fishermen and others who earn their living on the water.
Drowning is a leading cause of death among children in low- and middle-income countries in Asia, UNICEF said in a 2012 report. Unlike in high-income countries, the report said, the danger to children typically comes not from swimming pools but from daily exposure to water and “spontaneous actions that put them at risk.”
In Thailand, the Health Ministry reported in 2014 that drowning was the primary cause of death among children under 15. It said an average of four children in Thailand died every day from drowning, a rate that was five to 15 times higher than those for developed countries.
Linnan, a former medical epidemiologist for the U. S. Centers for Disease Control, said Thailand has made “enormous strides” in the last decade toward preventing child injury and morbidity. For example, he said, the government established a national day care program, a move that helped to prevent drownings among very young children.
But he said he hoped recent events at Tham Luang Cave would be a “teachable moment,” highlighting a need on a national scale for further efforts to prevent drowning.
