Thai cave rescue: How a challenge quickly became a trap

Teen girlfriend tells of her regret over angry fight with Pornchai Kamluang over cave challenge that quickly became a trap.

The trapped boys and their coach remain in good spirits, authorities say.

“Are you back at home?” the Thai teenager texted to her boyfriend. Then: “Call me when you’re online.”

About an hour later, at 10:58pm, she sent a heart sticker and four more messages:

“Do you have to be like this when you go to Tham Luang cave?”

“Where have you guys been? Dom isn’t online either.”

“Nobody’s online.”

“Where are you right now?”

The intended recipient, 16-year-old Pornchai Kamluang, never answered. As the world now knows, he and 11 other members of his youth soccer team, along with their coach, have been trapped more than half a kilometre underground, in rapidly flooding caves in northern Thailand.

Two weeks later, they remain there despite an international effort by organisations including Thai Navy SEALs and the U.S. military and more than 10,000 Thai soldiers, divers, engineers and volunteers, who have gathered at the caves near Thailand’s border with Myanmar.

The girlfriend, 14-year-old Warangkana Somsamoechai, says she warned her boyfriend, better known as Tee, not to enter the caves that day. They often flood during monsoon season, which starts in May.

The two argued after a morning soccer match, then again on the phone around 2pm, right before the group entered the caves. She says she hung up on Tee in anger. Now she says she wishes she could take it back.

The story of the trapped boys and their coach has riveted the world. Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo has urged the boys to stay strong, and World Cup organiser FIFA has invited them to the July 15 final in Russia. Elon Musk has sent engineers for assistance. One emergency worker has died in the effort.

Interviews with friends and colleagues show that although a few were seriously concerned about the risk, many were completely blindsided by how dangerous the hike turned out to be.

One boy was prevented from going with his teammates only because his mother worried his younger brother — whom she thought was too young for caving — would sneak along, too. Video clips shot by the students on the way and viewed by the Journal show them riding under cloudy skies, over roads wet with recent rain.

A Thai policeman guards an area under rainfall near the Tham Luang cave at the Khun Nam Nang Non Forest Park. Monsoonal rain remains a major threat.

WINDING CAVE COMPLEX

The 12 boys and their coach have been trapped in the cave since a flash flood pushed them to seek higher ground in one of the harder-to-reach areas of the complex on June 23. Many passages are submerged, and none of the boys have dived before, making the rescue operation a challenge.

More is also becoming known about the spelunkers themselves. Among them is a soccer coach who spent most of the past decade as a novice in a Buddhist monastery; a student from Myanmar who came to Thailand looking for a better life; and a soccer fanatic who’s afraid of the dark.

Saturday morning, Thai Navy SEALs carried the first batch of letters from the group to family outside, filled with assurances of health and pleas not to worry; one boy said he looked forward to eating barbecue pork.

But indications are mounting that the “13 lives,” as they’ve been dubbed locally, face increasing dangers. Authorities on Saturday ruled out keeping the boys underground until the rainy season ends in a few months, an option once seen as possibly the safest alternative. Some involved in the rescue have said the waters might not recede enough until year-end.

It now takes divers more than 5 hours to make a one-way journey to the boys, even after a daylong break from torrential rains and continuous pumping to drain water.

The air in the caves is being poisoned with carbon-dioxide from the number of people underground. Authorities said Saturday they were pulling some rescuers out of the caves to ease the deterioration and pumping in oxygen.

A heavy downpour or further deterioration of conditions in the cave could force authorities to stage a fast rescue.

“Earlier, I thought the boys could be all right for awhile,” Thai Navy SEAL Chief Rear Admiral Aphakorn Yoo-kongkaew told press Friday evening. “But now the situation has changed. We have limited time to work.”

A view of the mountain where the boys are trapped 1km underground.

The drama started two weeks ago, when Ekkapol Chantawong, assistant coach for the Wild Boars soccer club, decided to take some players on a trip after a Saturday practice match.

“OK everyone, drink a glass of water and please go to bed. Bicycle gang, see you at the school at 8:20,” he wrote in a group chat on Facebook Messenger on Friday, June 22, which was viewed by the Journal. “Don’t forget to have breakfast and pack lunch everyone.”

The next morning at 6:36, Mr. Ekkapol sent another message: “All, don’t forget to bring your flashlight.”

“I have one but it’s very lame, bro. Hahaha,” one boy replied.

The 70-some-member soccer club idolises Mr. Ekkapol, a 25-year-old hired by the Boars’ head coach to train the boys in daily practices. Coach Ek, as he’s called, had moved to the area after several years at a Buddhist monastery around 100 miles south so he could take care of his grandmother across the border in Myanmar.

Mr. Ekkapol now lives at a local temple and with his grandmother across the border in Myanmar. The abbot at the temple, Phra Prayut Jetiyanukarn, describes him as a responsible young man who meditates regularly and sports an amulet widely believed to protect the wearer from harm.

After soccer practice, Coach Ek made sure his players had water before drinking some himself, people who know the club say. He often took the team on excursions.

The players who went with him to the cave are tight-knit and soccer-mad, friends say.

Thirteen-year-old Duangpetch Promthep, or Dom, the Wild Boars’ gregarious captain, plays striker and dreams of going professional someway, friends say. Dom is popular with girls and sometimes rambunctious, they say.

The Boars’ overachiever is Adun Sam-on, the oldest of five siblings from a poor family in Myanmar. Adun’s family sent the lanky 14-year-old to live in Thailand several years ago in hope of a better life, friends and teachers say.

They describe him as an all-round athlete with trophies in everything from volleyball to futsal, who plays violin, piano and guitar and has a 3.94 GPA. Adun also wants to go pro and sees soccer as a way of staying in Thailand after completing his studies.

“Soccer is my life,” one of Adun’s best friends, Luea-Boon Junta, says he told him.

The morning of June 23 dawned overcast. Weather reports had been predicting a high chance of heavy rain across northern Thailand. The Wild Boars divided into two groups for a practice match, then got ready to cycle to the caves.

Many had already been there several times, an experience some found daunting.

Dom, the captain, is afraid of the dark, says his 13-year-old girlfriend, Nutchanan Ramkeaw, who says he once refused to go out to get something to eat because it was night-time. He sees the cave trips as a challenge that he can brave in a group, she says.

Another boy, 13-year-old Songpon Kanthawong, known as Pangpond, had been too scared to venture further than the cave’s mouth in previous trips but was determined to join this time.

He was prevented because his 11-year-old brother wanted to tag along, something the boys’ mother thought too taxing for her younger son, says Pangpond’s father, Noppadol Kanthawong. She forbade both boys from going, then got a neighbour to collect them from soccer practice to make sure, Mr. Noppadol says.

The boys entered the caverns around 2pm, soon after Tee and his girlfriend argued over whether he should go.

At 3pm, there was a sudden downpour lasting half an hour, followed by steady rain from 7pm onward, Mr. Noppadol recalls.

By around 8pm, parents were raising the alarm, and Mr. Noppadol says he got a panicked call from the head coach. The coach and some parents trooped to the cave around 9pm and saw the boys’ bicycles outside, then alerted officials, Mr. Noppadol says.

The cave system, estimated to extend for more than 10 kilometres, or more than 6 miles, hasn’t been fully explored; few people know the interior well. Thai Navy SEALs and other divers installed pumps and lines that would eventually drain 1.5 million litres — nearly half an Olympic-size swimming pool — every hour.

Intense rains for the first several days after the boys went missing stymied rescuers.

“Still cannot dive into the cave,” says a June 28 post on the Thai SEALs’ Facebook page. “Twenty pumps but defeated. Water has filled all the chambers and spilt out the entrance.”

Even after waters started receding a few days later, rescuers were facing terrible conditions.

At one narrow point in the cave, divers have to remove their air tanks to get through, even after clearing debris.

At other points divers had to make their way up and down through twisting, clouded passages as they planted guide ropes. As the divers worked farther in, they set up relay stations with air tanks and other gear every 25 yards.

Deeper inside, where the boys and Coach Ek had fled in search of higher ground, conditions turned grim as days ticked by.

The boys brought some snacks and a little water, and each had a flashlight, Thai authorities say. They ate and drank sparingly; local press report Mr. Ekkapol stinted himself so his charges could have more. He told the boys not to use their flashlights at the same time, to conserve batteries.

When they ran out of water, Mr. Ekkapol warned the boys not to drink the muddy floodwaters and to sip water dripping from the cave instead, according to Thai authorities. He told the boys not to move around much to conserve energy, and taught them meditation techniques to stay calm.

On Day 10, as the 13 were sitting in darkness, two British cave divers who were surveying a passage inside the cave system stuck their heads out of the water and saw the group in front of them.

Ever since, rescuers have been racing the clock to keep the boys healthy and figure out how to get them out. Thai SEALs swam in food, medicine, foil blankets and even some chalk so the kids could draw on cave walls to stay entertained.

The boys drew the SEALs logo, featuring two sharks and an anchor, with the words “13 Wild Boars,” according to a video the Thai SEALs brought out and posted online.

One SEAL who swam to the boys’ chamber said they asked him about the World Cup.

“I told them that the high-profile teams have gone home,” the SEAL recalled. “It’s only you who are still standing.”

The boys laughed, he said.

One plan to extract the boys — by draining water to safer levels, then swimming them out through flooded passages — has hit roadblocks. Last week, volunteers trying to help drain water by digging holes around the mountain ended up letting water back in.

Divers worry about the boys’ ability to stay calm during the treacherous journey out, since none have used diving equipment before. When Thai SEALs tested mask and breathing techniques on a local teen last week, he became too agitated to breathe properly, a person who saw the trial said.

Another proposal — to pull the team out through holes drilled in the ground — has resulted in 100 holes but no success so far, Gov. Narongsak Osottanakorn, who is heading the rescue effort, said on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Thai SEALs on Saturday brought out the group’s first batch of letters, scribbled on water-stained and muddy paper.

Mr. Ekkapol apologised to parents and promised to take care of the boys. Dom asked his parents not to forget his birthday — July 8 — and said he was fine, but chilly.

Adun wrote: “Don’t worry about us. I miss everyone. I want to go back home quickly.”

By Warangkana Chomchuen, Phred Dvorak and Jake Maxwell Watts

— Wall Street Journal