Thai Cave kids | All 12 boys and coach rescued from cave | visiting United

This story reminds of the Nigerian cook who survived for three days in a sunken ship. There’s incredible footage of the diver finding him alive.

 
“As rain is forecast in the next few days, the evacuation must speed up. Diving gear will be used. If the water rises, the task will be difficult. We must bring the kids out before then,” said Anupong Paojinda, the interior minister, according to the Bangkok Post. “Diving is not easy. Those who have never done it will find it difficult, because there are narrow passages in the cave. They must be able to use diving gear. If the gear is lost at any moment, it can be dangerous to life.”
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Sounds like the rescuers are up against the clock.
 
I've done the Padi cavern diving course and even though you never venture beyond the reach of sunlight I still got pretty nervous. No natural light, weird currents, extremely tight spaces and almost zero visibility feels like it'd be another world entirely. It would be absolutely terrifying for kids with no experience even with the best equipment and the most experienced divers there to guide them along - especially with them already being so weak and some might not even be able to swim. Hell, it seems like it's a challenging dive even for seasoned professionals.
 
This is a nightmare scenario. Knowing they are there and currently ok, albeit a bit hungry and weak, but there being a real risk that it could all go horribly wrong.

I can actually feel the urgency and concern.
 
Just read a funny story about on of the kids joking about whether they'd gone so far into the cave they'd reached England after the British diver popped up to say hello!

Brilliant that they've been found alive but there's still a long way to go. I love diving but I'm not sure I could do even the course Ekkie mentions above! Literally every little mistake, fault or piece of bad luck which can be rectified by slowly returning to the surface in open water diving will result in drowning in a cave.

The divers who found them have likely never dived in those caves before and were searching completely blind, not knowing what the water levels or conditions were around each corner, not knowing if the routes they were taking would even be passable and probably less and less sure with every tight corner that they would ever find anyone left alive. What absolute heroes!
 
Sassy Colin said:
But if you have a route to the cave, you should be able to run a cable along the route, give the boy a wet suit and aqua lung, with an experienced diver following on behind, they can follow the cable to the surface. It will take a long time, it might take a week to get them all out safely, but surely it's preferable to leaving them there for 4 months.
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I just read that the submerged portion is about 1.5km long, and it took the cave divers 3hrs to reach them. Cave diving is not trivial at all. It's bloody dangerous. It's not realistic to expect young boys the age of 11 who have never touched scuba equipment before to just put on the equipment and follow the divers out. A 3 hr dive in that circumstances involves switching air tanks etc underwater.

Edit: as mentioned by some other posters, parts of the cave tunnels would be too tight to navigate with scuba gear off. They would need to remove the gear, push the gear through crevices and swim through to a larger space before putting the gear on. All this in floodwater with limited visibility. Not to mention possible strong current. It is a recipe for disaster.
 
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At the risk of outing myself as an American (if that isn’t already apparent), I find myself wondering if they can’t just drill down through the rock if it would take them months to get those guys out without a hazardous diving expedition.
 
Organic Potatoes said:
At the risk of outing myself as an American (if that isn’t already apparent), I find myself wondering if they can’t just drill down through the rock if it would take them months to get those guys out without a hazardous diving expedition.
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It would probably be nearly impossible without making the whole thing collapse is my guess.
 
I can't imagine what a nightmare it must be for the kids and their parents.

I really hope it all ends well for everyone involved.
 
They've got a team with them now, including
Organic Potatoes said:
At the risk of outing myself as an American (if that isn’t already apparent), I find myself wondering if they can’t just drill down through the rock if it would take them months to get those guys out without a hazardous diving expedition.
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They're looking for alternate routes in. There are other caves in the area so people are surveying them to see if there's any connection or way of making a connection.

I think the problem touching the existing route is that it works and they'll worry about damaging it. There's so much water in the system that anywhere they drill could let in more.
 
Can’t they just stick in loads of pumps and drain it out after putting some barriers in place so that it doesn’t reflood?
 
golden_blunder said:
Can’t they just stick in loads of pumps and drain it out after putting some barriers in place so that it doesn’t reflood?
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From the looks of it there's ground water coming in as well. So they're pumping it and trying to get it lower while they can. They've diverted surface streams etc into the fields, to try and stop some coming in. But once it starts raining they won't be able to do much.
 
What if they drill a tunnel under it and then an access up to where they are? It would be a straight swim then with no obstacles and they could light it all the way?
 
golden_blunder said:
What if they drill a tunnel under it and then an access up to where they are? It would be a straight swim then with no obstacles and they could light it all the way?
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It's about 1000 meters from the surface (height), so drilling seems to be an impossibility. It's fascinating and very disturbing at the same time
 
How did they survive nine days? Did they have food with them?
 
MDFC Manager said:
It's about 1000 meters from the surface (height), so drilling seems to be an impossibility. It's fascinating and very disturbing at the same time
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You know the type of technology used for the channel tunnel? Would eat it up
Just wondering if it’s possible to go under them up?
 
What kind of school signs off on kids pot-holing or going down cave tunnels? What could possibly go wrong? I remember this kind of thing used to happen in the UK too
 
jojojo said:
They've got a team with them now, including


They're looking for alternate routes in. There are other caves in the area so people are surveying them to see if there's any connection or way of making a connection.

I think the problem touching the existing route is that it works and they'll worry about damaging it. There's so much water in the system that anywhere they drill could let in more.
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Not to mention the dont want to crush the kids with falling rocks
 
Siorac said:
How did they survive nine days? Did they have food with them?
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You can survive weeks without food, it's water you need every 6/7 days.

Considering they were in the damp/shade of a cave they probably weren't dehydrating as much as normal.
 
SqueakyWeasel said:
Water level drops 1cm per hour and massive storm forecast predicted to be enough to flood the cave completely :(
Currently trying to teach kids that can't swim how to dive :confused:
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I don't think they'd expect the kids to do any swimming. It'll be more about keeping them still/calm while being pulled/pushed along by real divers. So a lot of breathing exercises, how to get the mask back in place if it gets dislodged etc - scary but a decent option. They'll want to keep them as small as possible while protecting them from the rock.

Assuming that is that the practice rescue runs they're trying today go as planned, and the handovers can be done as they hope.
 
jojojo said:
I don't think they'd expect the kids to do any swimming. It'll be more about keeping them still/calm while being pulled/pushed along by real divers. So a lot of breathing exercises, how to get the mask back in place if it gets dislodged etc - scary but a decent option. They'll want to keep them as small as possible while protecting them from the rock.

Assuming that is that the practice rescue runs they're trying today go as planned, and the handovers can be done as they hope.
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As far as I'm aware, it's about 6K completely underwater so rebreather practice is essential to avoid panic. They will deffo leave them where they are for up to 6 weeks unless it becomes imperative that they have to move them. If the predicted rains do come, and the cavern they are in floods, then the whole network of tunnels (their escape route) will be filled with treacherous currents as well as the "no air" problem to deal with – a big ask for experienced divers, let alone divers with a class of young kids that can't swim and their teacher in tow.

They are definitely in the best hands though!
 
Surely there will be great efforts being made to make sure that no more water gets into that cave no matter what the rain forecast is?

Obvioulsy I dont know the area around there but wouldnt it be fairly simple to build some sort of structure that prevents that? Seems to me that that is the most importatnt thing at the minute. If they can prevent that from happening then they have time to figure out how to get them out.
 
golden_blunder said:
You know the type of technology used for the channel tunnel? Would eat it up
Just wondering if it’s possible to go under them up?
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Even if you could get over the logistics of shipping in a mini TBM, building it and establishing power, water supply etc at the same time creating a break in point for the machine, usually a shaft to the required depth of the machine with a balk wall they can jack off for launch, you'd be looking at around a month, probably two, before they could get going and then you'd only progress at 100-200m per week so you'd be way beyond the period for just waiting for the rainy season to finish and the caves to dry out normally. On top of that depending on the strata of the rock/soil an EPBM machine might be the only one capable of drilling and that could potentially collapse or flood caverns with the pressure balance if they hit fractured rock or cavities.

Best mechanical bet would be to drill vertically from above as they did with the Chilean miners but again that really depends on how deep their location is from the surface, anything more than 100m is pushing the bounds of the biggest drilling rigs and really looking more like vertical tunneling with all the previous issues.

If they can't swim/tow them out then sitting tight may be the only safe option as horrible as that souds.
 
From the description given by the British divers the dive is about 2.5km and it took them 3 hours to get there. From what I can gather it's not continuous though so there are likely pockets where they could surface. Even so given how slow progress will likely be they might well be underwater for an up to an hour. That's in itself is a hell of a long stretch to be in zero visibility water with neither skills nor experience. Claustrophobia and panic have to be massive concerns.

If they're going to do it I guess they'll strap the kids to some sort of modified stretcher and use guide lines with beacons. They'll do it one by one and probably have two or three ferrymen, maybe for each section, either side of choke points. Apparently these latter include some no-mount passages (you can't wear scuba tanks on your back) so that complicates things even further. I have no idea what you do about that.

Kid's will need full face masks with integrated rebreathers. You can communicate in these and they're quite reassuring but I don't think they're very common in kids size. They'll also need very thick wetsuits because it's going to be very very cold. They'll need to get used to wearing them and if it's safe practice being in the water for reasonably long periods to get used to the conditions.

Given the forecast there's not a great deal of time to do these things, but if the cave fills up from the monsoon it might become impossible to reach them this side of rainy season. Being trapped for months on a ledge in a cave is a fecking horrible prospect. I'm guessing they might have to dive.
 
Rooney24 said:
Surely there will be great efforts being made to make sure that no more water gets into that cave no matter what the rain forecast is?

Obvioulsy I dont know the area around there but wouldnt it be fairly simple to build some sort of structure that prevents that? Seems to me that that is the most importatnt thing at the minute. If they can prevent that from happening then they have time to figure out how to get them out.
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Unlikely, you'd need to cover virtually the entire mountain or any attempts to block water in one place would only see it enter through another rock fissure or cavern and potentially make matters worse in the cave. Pumping out some of the flooded U bends on the access route and epoxy sealing any fissures to prevent them refilling might make some sections of the extraction easier but plugging the entire mountain would be impossible even if a monsoon wasn't bearing down on them.
 
Bury Red said:
Unlikely, you'd need to cover virtually the entire mountain or any attempts to block water in one place would only see it enter through another rock fissure or cavern and potentially make matters worse in the cave. Pumping out some of the flooded U bends on the access route and epoxy sealing any fissures to prevent them refilling might make some sections of the extraction easier but plugging the entire mountain would be impossible even if a monsoon wasn't bearing down on them.
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So with heavy rain forecast in the next few days is it simply going to come to the point where they quickly decide to get them out? The alternative looks like hoping the rain forecast isnt so heavy that it floods the cave.
 
SqueakyWeasel said:
As far as I'm aware, it's about 6K completely underwater so rebreather practice is essential to avoid panic. They will deffo leave them where they are for up to 6 weeks unless it becomes imperative that they have to move them. If the predicted rains do come, and the cavern they are in floods, then the whole network of tunnels (their escape route) will be filled with treacherous currents as well as the "no air" problem to deal with – a big ask for experienced divers, let alone divers with a class of young kids that can't swim and their teacher in tow.

They are definitely in the best hands though!
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The whole thing looks terrifying. I guess it's all about finding the least bad options.

Rooney24 said:
Surely there will be great efforts being made to make sure that no more water gets into that cave no matter what the rain forecast is?

Obvioulsy I dont know the area around there but wouldnt it be fairly simple to build some sort of structure that prevents that? Seems to me that that is the most importatnt thing at the minute. If they can prevent that from happening then they have time to figure out how to get them out.
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They're closing off underground waterways that feed in, and trying to re-route surface water streams that feed into those underground fissures to give them a chance of getting the water levels down. If it starts raining hard, they'll lose that control.

There are some good graphics at:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...escuers-race-time-trapped-boys-monsoon-storms
that give an idea of what the route looks like.

And this from the BBC that gives an overview
_102319170_thai_cave_rescue_v2_inf640-nc.png
 
Bury Red said:
Even if you could get over the logistics of shipping in a mini TBM, building it and establishing power, water supply etc at the same time creating a break in point for the machine, usually a shaft to the required depth of the machine with a balk wall they can jack off for launch, you'd be looking at around a month, probably two, before they could get going and then you'd only progress at 100-200m per week so you'd be way beyond the period for just waiting for the rainy season to finish and the caves to dry out normally. On top of that depending on the strata of the rock/soil an EPBM machine might be the only one capable of drilling and that could potentially collapse or flood caverns with the pressure balance if they hit fractured rock or cavities.

Best mechanical bet would be to drill vertically from above as they did with the Chilean miners but again that really depends on how deep their location is from the surface, anything more than 100m is pushing the bounds of the biggest drilling rigs and really looking more like vertical tunneling with all the previous issues.

If they can't swim/tow them out then sitting tight may be the only safe option as horrible as that souds.
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Yeah I was thinking earlier of a big oil drilling rig, but I suppose it’s nearly impossible if only for logistical reasons. You’d have to blow up a small portion of the mountain to create a pad and build roads that could handle a caravan of heavy trucks. This would create instability in the cave network below, and it’s not like the Chilean situation where they had a large area to go if something caves in or when the last drill bit breaks through.

Get past all that, and they’d still have to drill multiple boreholes of increasing size and hit a very small target with a very large bit. By the time they got there via drilling, the rains would be over and they could leave as they came in...
 
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