Responders rescued 8 stranded Thai soccer players from flooded cave; 5 remain trapped

All 13 survived being stranded in the dark, but there’s still work to be done.

UPDATE: Eight boys have been rescued by divers, leaving four players and their coach still stranded inside the cave system. Mild weather and a break in the rain have created a narrow window for further rescue attempts, which have paired each stranded child with two divers to navigate the flooded corridors on the path back to dry land. The boys who have been evacuated have since been taken to a local hospital for evaluation.

Original story: A youth soccer team trapped in Thailand’s flooded Tham Luang Nang Non cave system for more than nine days were found Monday — but it will still take time to get the 12 boys and their coach back to safety. An international rescue team plumbed the depths of the system after torrential rains had effectively sealed the team, whose players range from 11 to 16 years in age, deep inside the cave, but could not bring them to safety yet due to the amount of water remaining underground.

“I confirm they are all safe,” Chiang Rai Governor Narongsak Osottanakorn told reporters. “Our mission (is) not done yet. We will drain all water out from the cave then we will take all 13 people out of the cave. We are now planning how to send nurse and doctor inside the cave to check their health and movement. We will work all night.”

Rescue teams, led by Thailand’s Navy SEALs and aided by experts from the United States, United Kingdom, China, and Australia, will attempt to send food and other supplies into the cave while they coordinate a rescue plan. Evacuating 13 weakened individuals through a series of flooded passages will be the next challenge in what’s already been a harrowing tale of survival.

The group went missing June 23 after venturing into the cave as part of a team outing. They ventured deep into the system, beyond signs that warned of the danger that comes with potential floods as the rainy season approaches. The youth club was nearly two miles into the limestone caves when a storm outside cut off their path home and forced them to venture deeper into the system to find higher ground.

They eventually found a dry enough area to camp out, though no one was sure exactly where. Rescuers had pinpointed an elevated patch of rock informally known as “Pattaya Beach” as a likely refuge, only for SEAL divers to find it flooded as well. Nearly 10 full days into the search, optimism levels were running low.

But the divers kept working, and some 500 yards from Pattaya Beach they found the team and its coach in the darkness, all 13 of them alive. As difficult as the search was, the rescue may be even tougher. Thailand is now at the beginning of its rainy seasons, and pumping enough water from the caves to make its routes passable was a major undertaking.

On Sunday an international team of rescuers worked together to rescue the trapped team. Beginning at 10 a.m. local time, it took over 10 hours for the team to begin rescuing the boys. At the time of writing four boys had been rescued, and efforts are still underway to free the rest of the team.