Thai cave rescue: SEALs escape, then the pumps failed
As the last SEAL and Aussie doctor Richard Harris emerged from the Tham Luang cave, the unthinkable happened | WATCH
It was a hoarse, roaring Mexican wave of a cheer that bounced off the dark walls of the Tham Luang cave and carried down a long daisy chain of exhausted divers just after 10pm last night that told Australian divers stationed between Chamber Three and the mouth of the cave that the last Navy SEAL was coming out.
Against all odds 12 Thai boys and their football coach had been pulled out of the winding, treacherous, flooded cave and now, three hours later, the army medic and three SEALS who had stayed underground with the boys since they were found on July 2 were emerging.
“There was actually a chain of yelling and screaming. Where I was, right down the bottom you could hear all the cheers,” one AFP diver told The Australian today in an extraordinary account of the final moments of the 17 day search and rescue mission that has been followed around the world.
But there was little time for celebration.
Within minutes of the last man leaving the cave and the clean-up beginning, the AFP divers saw a hundred headlights racing towards them and knew something was wrong.
The pumps that had operated 24 hours a day for more than a week to drain enough water from the cave to extract the 13 trapped footballers had just failed and the water level had already started visibly rising again.
“Everyone is around cleaning up. 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,” the diver said.
As if the tragic death of one retired Navy Seal inside the cave early Friday morning 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 they 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 this morning but he declined to comment.
It later emerged that his father had died in South Australia shortly after Dr Harris emerged from the cave last night for the last time — one of the heroes of the rescue mission — with his long-time dive buddy, Craig Challen right behind him.
A statement issued this morning 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”.
“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.”
Australian Defence Force spokesman Alex Rubin told media today Dr Harris was “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. 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.”
In the first detailed account of the rescue mission inside the cave, Australian divers have described their role in detail and the incredible obstacles overcome to pull the boys 3.2km from the sandy slope where they had sheltered for more than two weeks to the cave entrance.
The treacherous first 1.7km to Chamber Three, where the Thai Navy SEALS command post was set up, was largely an underwater mission in which the boys were forced to scuba dive between two rescue divers, but were intermittently transferred to stretchers and pulled across the top of the water in sections where the cave floor rose and air pockets emerged.
The well-documented last obstacle before Chamber Three was the T-junction “choke point” – a tiny crevice just 38cm high in which the boys were essentially pulled through a U-shaped bend to the chamber on the other side.
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 potentially deadly obstacle course through which the boys were passed on stretchers, still breathing air through a full face mask, through 150 pairs of hands.
More than 100 divers - Thais, Australians, Americans, Danes, British - formed a line and passed the stretchered boys “hand on hand” down rocky banks so steep you could barely walk down them.
“You had to pass them down. Imagine a rocky mountain. Once it got onto 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 (the 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 divers inside the cave, the air had thinned, and the concentration of oxygen was dangerously low.
Still, the entire rescue effort had made incredible strides in the eight days since the boys were found.
The divers described a gruelling four to five hour trek just to get the 1500 metres from the cave entrance to Chamber Three after their arrival on July 1. It involved diving deep sumps “shaped like the S bend in a toilet”, climbing slippery rock canyons and walking 300 metre stretches through unstable tunnels, then back into the water, all the while carrying 46kg of dive gear on their back.
The last obstacle before Chamber Three was a tiny hole that dropped to the water below.
But as the days advanced and water levels dropped, Australian divers 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.
The seven Australian divers’ initial role was as 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,” AFP commander Glen McEwen said at a media briefing today.
They couldn’t go past that point with their bulky equipment, which is specifically designed for black water searching but not for the sort of narrow crevices and holes the divers who went all the way into the boys were having to navigate.
Early this morning Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull spoke to the entire Australian team and passed on the congratulations of Australians for their contribution to the rescue effort.
“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.
“It’s one of those career defining moments,” one AFP diver agreed.
“I’m actually hoping I don’t have any more of them.”
