Thai boys wave to camera in first video since cave rescue
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Eighteen days after entering the caves on a team-bonding session, the remaining lost boys and their coach, as well as all rescue and medical personnel, emerged alive and well on Tuesday, following a daring and precarious operation, which saw one volunteer Navy seal lose his life.
Narongsak Osatanaskorn, the former governor who has led the rescue, made the official announcement at 9.45pm on Tuesday evening, after a tense few days of rescue missions.
“I never imagined this could happen – but we did it. We completed mission impossible,” the beaming rescue chief told a throng of hundreds of reporters and support crew, before stepping forth and inviting the crowd to join him and pose for photos.
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The team of expert divers from Thailand and around the world completed their improbable mission some 60 hours after a round-the-clock operation was launched on Sunday morning, as seasonal monsoon rains threatened to trap the boys and their coach inside the caves for months.
The 13 were stranded on a 10-square-metre ledge more than a mile inside the cave without proper food, water, sanitation or sunlight, until they were discovered by a pair of British divers on 2 July.
Conditions improved somewhat after rescuers made contact but fears about poor oxygen levels and the ominous monsoon kept the watching world on edge.
The jubilant rescue chief announced that the families of the five who came out of the cave today would be able to visit their loved ones this evening – a reversal on the previous two batches of four to emerge, who had to wait 24 hours to see theirs.
Gobchai Boon-orrana, the deputy director of Thailand’s department of disaster prevention and mitigation, was equally elated in addressing the crowd.
Thailand cave rescue operation: in pictures
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“Today, I don’t want to talk about work,” he announced.
One of the lead hands on the mission, Mr Gobchai referred to those rescued as his “13 grandsons.”
He joked that Thailand now had a new internationally famous tourist attraction, following wall-to-wall coverage of the cave rescue right around the globe.
Finally, he paid tribute to Saman Gunan, the 38-year-old Navy Seal who lost his life in the caves leading up the eventual rescue, declaring him a hero of the Thai people and the world.
“May he rest in peace – the hero of Thung Luam,” Mr Gobchai said.
Jedsada Chokdumrongsuk, permanent secretary at the Public Health Ministry, said that recovery for the children is being carefully managed
"The kids are footballers so they have high immune systems," Mr Jedsada said. "Everyone is in high spirits and are happy to get out. But we will have a psychiatrist to evaluate them."
It could be at least seven days before they can be released from hospital, Mr Jesada told a news conference.
Mr Jedsada said they were uncertain what type of infections the boys could face "because we have never experienced this kind of issue from a deep cave."
Now that the boys are out, here is a recap of the 17-day ordeal they have just endured.
Timeline:
June 23: After a morning practice, 12 members of the local Wild Boars youth soccer team bicycle with their 25-year-old coach to the Tham Luang Nang Non cave to explore, when heavy rains begin. When none of the boys return home after dark and cannot be contacted, parents report them as missing. Their bicycles are found parked and locked at the cave entrance as a search begins around midnight.
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June 24: Search and rescue teams comprising local authorities, police and rescue workers find soccer shoes and backpacks left behind by the boys near the cave entrance.
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June 25: As the search expands, handprints and footprints thought to belong to the boys are found farther from the cave entrance. Parents holding a vigil outside begin prayer sessions.
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June 26: About a dozen Thai navy SEALs and others searchers penetrate the cave, but Interior Minister Anupong Paojinda tells reporters they are seriously handicapped by muddy water that has filled some chambers of the large cave to their ceilings.
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June 27: More heavy rainfall stymies search efforts, flooding underground passages faster than water can be pumped out. A U.S. military team and British cave experts, along with several other private teams of foreign cavers, join the operation.
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June 28: Efforts begin to drain groundwater from the cave by drilling from outside into the mountain. A search for other entrances to the cave intensifies as diving is temporarily suspended for safety reasons.
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June 29: Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha visits the cave site and urges relatives of the missing not to give up hope. Efforts to drain the cave with pumps make little progress.
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June 30: The effort to locate the missing picks up pace again, as a break in the rain eases flooding in the system of caverns and more experts from around the world, including Australia and China, join the rescue mission. In anticipation of finding the boys, an evacuation drill is held to practice how they will be sent to a hospital after leaving the cave.
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July 1: Rescue divers advance into the main passageway inside the flooded cave and set up a staging area inside. Thai navy SEALs reach a bend where the kilometer- (half-mile-) long passage splits in two directions.
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July 2: Two expert British cave divers locate the missing boys and their coach. They record video of the boys talking with them.
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July 3: The videos are released and show the boys taking turns introducing themselves, folding their hands together in a traditional Thai greeting and saying their names. The boys also say they are healthy.
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July 4: Seven navy SEALs and a doctor join the boys with food and medicine. Options are discussed about whether the boys should be taken out of the cave with divers soon or kept in place until conditions improve.
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July 5: The boys continue with diving lessons in case a decision is made to extract them through a route that is partially underwater. The effort to pump out water in increased.
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July 6: Officials indicate that they favor extracting the boys as soon as possible, fearing further danger if they are forced to stay inside by more rain causing additional flooding. Concern increases about falling oxygen levels inside the cave. A former navy SEAL aiding the rescue effort dies from a lack of oxygen during his mission.
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July 7: Officials suggest that an underwater evacuation will be made in the following few days because of predictions of a rainstorm. However, they say the boys' diving skills are not yet where they need to be.
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July 8: The official heading the rescue operation declares that "D-Day" has arrived as he announces the start of the operation to bring the boys and their coach out of the cave. Divers take four of the boys out through tight passages and flooded caverns.
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July 9: Divers take four more boys to safety during the second day of the rescue operation. This leaves four boys and their coach still inside the cave.
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July 10: On the third day of the rescue operation, divers bring out the remaining four boys and their coach, ending an ordeal that lasted more than two weeks.
Members of the Wild Boars elite youth football team have been to hell and back, writes Matt Blomberg at the cave site in Mae Sai.
They have spent more than two weeks trapped inside a dark and dank cave network here in the far norther reaches of tropical Thailand. No sunlight. Rations of food. Air thick with the stench of bats and bereft of healthy levels of oxygen.
Remarkably, the twelve boys – aged between 11 and 16 – and a coach have emerged from the caves with few physical ailments. Two boys are being treated for a lung infection, according to doctors tending to them, with the remainder already on the road to recovery.
As the rescue has unfolded over the past three days, however, experts have warned that mental aspects of the recovery may not be so straightforward, pointing to likely occurrences of post-traumatic stress disorder and flashbacks.
Speaking to The Independent, an academic specialised in the resilience of children said the fact that the boys shared the bond of being part of a team was vital to their recovery.
Read more about the mental aspect of the boys' ordeal here:
The divers - and the boys on their way out - faced extremely challenging conditions, ranging from fast-moving floodwater full of debris to flooded passages only wide enough for a person to squeeze through without equipment. This image shows the sort of conditions the rescue team have been working in:
With official information scarce, details of the progress of the rescue mission today came from witnesses at the scene. Here, member of the football team can be seen being stretchered to a waiting helicopter:
Otherwise, journalists and photographers at the Mae Sai site - which has been moved far back from the mouth of the cave to allow rescuers to do their work, have had to make do watching out for ambulances and helicopters as they leave the cave, like here...
... And as they arrive at the main hospital in Chiang Rai city, here:
No pictures have emerged yet of the boys themselves since their rescue. They are being kept in quarantine and under close medical observation until they are free from any infections they may have picked up in the cave. Soon though, they will have a pretty extraordinary story to tell.
The boys may miss out on a trip Moscow for the World Cup final, but it seems fair to say they won't be short of invites to attend other games in the coming season.
AS Roma in Italy have been among the first to congratulate them on getting out of the cave, writing that it is "the best football news of the summer". (Worth bearing in mind Italy did not qualify for the tournament in Russia)
And Manchester United have said they would be "honoured to welcome the team from the Wild Boars Football Club and their rescuers to Old Trafford this coming season".
Thailand's prime minister says the 12 boys saved from a flooded cave were given an anti-anxiety medication to help with their rescue.
Asked at a weekly news conference on Tuesday if the boys had been sedated, the prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said, "Who would chloroform them? If they're chloroformed, how could they come out? It's called Anxiolytic, something to make them not excited, not stressed."
Prayuth also said the Tham Luang cave will be closed for some time. He said it needs to be made safe so it can be developed into a tourist destination.
Diver Ivan Karadzic, who participated in the cave rescue, has told Canada's CBCNews that the water in the cave was very cold after recent spells of heavy rain overnight into Monday and again from 1am on Tuesday.
Karadzic is reported as saying there was "absolutely zero" visibility.
And, according to the public broadcaster, the diver said the boys remained calm during rescue, and wore full-face masks and "many, many" layers of wet suits.
Fifa has just confirmed what we suspected earlier - the boys won't be out of hospital in time to take up their invitation of visiting the World Cup final in Moscow.
According to BBC Sport's Richard Conway, Fifa said it would meet with the Thai FA around the time of Sunday's final and "look into finding a new opportunity to invite the boys to a FIFA event to share with them a moment of communion and celebration".
The US president has sent his congratulations to Thailand's Navy Seals after the rescue operation. In a tweet, he described the success of efforts to free the 12 boys and their football coach from the Tham Laung caves as a "beautiful moment".
The city of Chiang Rai has burst into celebration at the news that all 13 people trapped in the caves have safely emerged.
Cheers erupted at a local government office where dozens of volunteers and journalists were awaiting updates on the success of the intricate and high-risk mission.
People on the street cheered and clapped when ambulances ferrying the last of the boys arrived at the city's hospital, about 45 miles from the cave.
Payap Maiming, 40, who helped provide food and necessities to rescue workers and journalists, described the operation's success as a "miracle".
"I'm happy for Thais all over the country, for the people of Mae Sai, and actually just everyone in the world because every news channel has presented this story and this is what we have been waiting for," she said.
Mae Sai is the district where the cave is located, in the northern part of Chiang Rai province, near the border with Myanmar.
People in Chiang Rai celebrate news of the rescue operation's success
John Tangkitcharoenthawon, a local village chairman who was working as a volunteer translator for the tourist police, was beaming with happiness at the successful rescue.
"If this place had a roof, the morale has gone straight through it," he said.
"This is an important event in my life. It is something I will remember," added a visibly emotional Rachapol Ngamgrabuan, an official at Chiang Rai's provincial press office.
"There were times when I cried," he said. "Happy. Very happy to see all Thai people love each other."
Thais turned to social media on Tuesday to show their elation using the hashtag #Hooyah, a word used by the navy to build morale. Other hashtags included #Heroes and #Thankyou.
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