Thai cave rescue: first images of boys in hospital, pump failure underlines close shave

The mission to free 12 footballers and their coach from deep inside the flooded cave could have ended very differently.

The last Thai Navy SEAL had barely left the flooded Tham Luang cave on Tuesday night — his exit heralded by a hoarse Mexican wave of a cheer from a hundred divers lining the route out — when the industrial pumps that had kept the water at bay for a week failed.

From near the cave entrance, Australian Federal Police divers watched the bobbing headlamps of 100 panicked men streaming down the steep rocky canyon from the direction of the rescue command post in Chamber Three, as water levels in the cave began rising before their eyes.

“Everyone was around cleaning up,” one AFP diver told The Australian yesterday in an account of the final moments of the 17-day search-and-rescue mission followed around the world.

“Where we were, all these headlights started coming over the hill. There were 100 guys running down the hill.

“The pumps failed and the water in the sumps had started rising.”

Had that happened hours earlier, the underground rescue effort to free 12 Thai boys and their football coach from deep inside the flooded cave could have ended very differently.

The last group of five, including the 25-year-old Wild Boars team coach, were pulled out of the cave by 7pm (10pm AEST) on Tuesday to the cheers of volunteers outside and the relief of millions following the rescue effort around the world.

But it was only when the three Thai Navy SEALs and army medic emerged, the four men who had stayed underground with the boys since they were found by British cave divers on July 2, that the rescue team could finally relax.

“It was unbelievable. When the last person came out I cried,” one German paramedic, who worked with the British diving team but asked not to be named, said yesterday.

He said coach Ekapol “Aek” Chantawong, the 25-year-old former novice monk who was orphaned at 10, was the last of the Wild Boars football team to be carried out of the cave.

“He asked to be the last man out,” revealed the paramedic, who spent much of the rescue effort based in the Chamber Three command centre.

The last moments of the “monumental” 17-day rescue effort were intensely emotional for everyone involved.

“There was actually a chain of yelling and screaming (inside the cave). Where I was, right down the bottom you could hear all the cheers,” one AFP diver recounted of the moment the last Navy SEALs emerged on Tuesday night.

Yesterday, Australian divers gave the first detailed account of their contribution to the rescue, and the obstacles overcome to pull the boys 3.2km to safety from the sandy slope where they had taken shelter more than two weeks earlier from flash flooding during a post-football game excursion.

The treacherous first 1.7km to chamber three was largely an underwater mission in which the boys were forced to scuba-dive ­between two rescue divers. They were also intermittently transferred to stretchers, as seen in the footage, and pulled across the top of the water in sections where the cave floor rose and air pockets emerged.

The last obstacle before Chamber Three was the T-junction, a crevice 38cm high that the boys were essentially pulled through.

The boys recovering in a Chaing Rai hospital. Picture: AFP PHOTO / The government public relations department (PRD) and Government spokesman bureau

But that was only the half of it.

The remaining 1500-metre journey from Chamber Three, where Thai Navy SEALs had set up a command post, to the cave mouth was a deadly obstacle course in which the boys were passed on stretchers, still breathing air through a full face mask, through 150 pairs of hands.

As many as 150 divers — Thais, Australians, Chinese, Americans, Danes, Britons — formed a line and passed the stretchered boys “hand on hand” down rocky banks so steep you could barely walk down them.

Late last night, footage of the rescue showed boys being carried on stretchers to freedom while seemingly heavily sedated and wearing wetsuits and diving gear. The footage, released on the Thai Navy SEALs Facebook page, shows the complex operation with numerous divers using pulleys, ropes and rubber piping to haul the members of the team to safety.

“You had to pass them down. Imagine a rocky mountain. Once it got on to flat stuff it was just guys carrying them and then we would go again, hand on hand, up and down the steep canyons,” one AFP diver recounted. “The boys would have passed through 150 pairs of hands. We all formed part of a chain, split into different areas.

“We were each checking as they (boys) passed to make sure their air gauges were still full. The kids were still on dive cylinders, and wearing full face masks.”

With so many rescuers inside the cave, the air had thinned, and the concentration of oxygen was dangerous.

The rescue effort had made incredible strides in the eight days since the boys were found.

Both the divers and the German paramedic described an initially gruelling four to five-hour trek just to get the 1500m from the cave entrance to Chamber Three.

It involved diving deep sumps “shaped like the S-bend in a toilet”, climbing slippery rock canyons and walking 300m stretches through unstable tunnels, then back into the water, all the while carrying 46kg of dive gear on their backs.

The last obstacle before Chamber Three was a tiny hole that dropped to the water below.

With no pumps working to lower water levels in the first days, AFP commander Glen McEwen described conditions yesterday as an “unfriendly environment”.

“It was dark, it was narrow, it was flooded, it was complex, there were twists and turns,” he said.

But as the days advanced and water levels dropped, Australian divers and their fellow rescuers were making the trip from the cave mouth to Chamber Three in as little as 40 minutes.

“By the end a lot of mud banks had been cut out as stairs, ropes were fixed to the wall as hand rails and a well-worn path had been created rather than every two steps having to look up thinking, ‘where do I go?’” said one diver.

The Australian divers couldn’t go past Chamber Three with their bulky dive equipment, which is designed for black-water searching but not for the sort of narrow crevices and holes the divers who went all the way to the boys were having to navigate.

So once the boys were found on July 2, the primary role of the seven Australian divers — six AFP specialist divers and one navy clearance diver — became largely that of Sherpas, moving industrial-sized pumps, hundreds of air cylinders, radio gear, food and water supplies into the new command centre set up in Chamber Three as the water slowly receded.

“Our people spent 75 hours in that cave and collectively have moved around 20 tonnes of equipment,” Commander McEwen proudly said yesterday.

“It’s amazing what the human being can do,” he said, describing the rescue effort as one of “extraordinary people doing extraordinary things. And when you have a common purpose, particularly when there’s a human element, egos are put aside and it’s hands to the wheel.”

But, by far the most difficult moment for many was when Saman Gunan, a retired Thai Navy SEAL, died early Friday morning after running out of air on a return dive.

On Tuesday night rescue command chief Narongsak Osaththanakorn described the former Navy SEAL petty officer as “the hero of Tham Luang”.

“Definitely the hardest bit was when our team member died,” the paramedic told The Australian. “That was not easy at all.”

As if the death of one retired Navy SEAL inside the cave was not enough of a reminder of the perils of this operation, the dramatic climax underscored just what a deadly race against time the massive team of rescuers faced as it worked around the clock to bring the boys and their coach to safety.

Key to the rescue mission was Australian anaesthetist Richard Harris, a world-renowned cave diver who was specifically requested by the British diving team that first found the trapped boys. He dived the 3.2km to where they were sheltering every day of the rescue to clear each one for the perilous journey out, and left the cave only when the last boy had been rescued each day.

The Australian spoke briefly to Dr Harris yesterday but he declined to comment beyond acknowledging the intense interest in his contribution and saying he was not ready to speak publicly.

The last four Thai Navy SEALs to emerge from the cave.

It later emerged that his father had died shortly after he emerged from the cave on Tuesday night for the last time — one of the heroes of the rescue mission — with his long-time dive buddy, Perth diver Craig Challen, right behind him.

A statement issued by his employers at the MedStar Clinical Service hailed Dr Harris as a “quiet and kind man who did not think twice about offering his support on this mission” and asked for privacy so his family could grieve.

“It is with great sadness that I confirm that Harry’s dad passed away last night a short time after the successful rescue operation in Thailand.

“I have spoken with Harry. This is clearly a time of grief for the Harris family, magnified by the physical and emotional demands of being part of this week’s highly complex and ultimately successful rescue operation,” the MedStar Clinical Service said.

Australian Defence Force spokesman Alex Rubin described Dr Harris as “quintessential” to the operation’s success.

“He is an extremely humble man and the amount of weight and pressure that was put on him; I have the utmost respect for everything he has done,” Mr Rubin said.

“He is what I would consider personally one of the most professional doctors I have ever met and his unique skill sets as a specialist doctor and also his extensive experience as a cave diver was quintessential to the success of this operation which was led very well by the Thai authorities,” he said.

At Chiang Rai Hospital yesterday all 12 boys and their coach were in quarantine as doctors monitored their health and guarded against the risk of infection.

The last of the team members were in good physical and mental condition, a senior public health official assured yesterday, though like their teammates they too showed elevated levels of white blood cells, indicating infection.

The second group of four boys, aged 12-14, were to be allowed to see their families yesterday through the glass window of a hospital isolation unit, Public Health Ministry inspector Thongchai Lertwilairattanapong said.

The three Thai Navy SEALs and Thai army medic were also doing well but would also spend at least 48 hours in quarantine.

After the rescue, Mr Narongsak paid tribute to the collective effort of some 10,000 people who helped pull off the rescue effort, from the Navy SEALs, the forestry workers searching for alternative exits to the volunteers who cleaned toilets at the rescue camp.

“Today Team Thailand achieved mission impossible,” he said to cheers from the assembled media. “An important lesson here is we succeeded because we love and support each other.”

Early yesterday Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull spoke to the entire Australian team and passed on the congratulations of the Australian people.

“They’re extremely proud, extremely relieved … it was probably the most monumental and inspirational effort they’ve ever been a part of,” Commander McEwen said of the Australian team, which also included 10 support staff.

“It’s one of those career-defining moments,” one AFP diver said.

“I’m actually hoping I don’t have any more of them.”