After more than a week in darkness and rising floodwater, rescuers in Laos have pulled one of seven trapped men to safety from a semi-submerged cave in central Xaysomboun province, according to the team working at the site.
The seven men have been stranded in the cavern since 20 May, early state media reports said, after flash floods cut off their escape as they searched for gold in a remote mountainous area.
Rescuers located five of the men alive on Wednesday, packed into a narrow shaft about 300m from the cave mouth.
Video filmed by rescue divers showed the men coated in mud and visibly drained, telling rescuers they were suffering chest pains and sharp hunger, while two others from the group remain unaccounted for.
“The first victim has been successfully rescued out of the cave,” a Thai rescue group said in a Facebook post, sharing a photo of three men helping a bedraggled, muddy survivor across uneven ground.
Teams have centered their efforts on pumping out monsoon flood waters that inundated the cave and trapped the men.
“One person has got out of the cave safely,” Thai rescue team member Kengkard Bonggawong wrote in a separate Facebook post.
“We will assess the other four and we will hunt for the other two tomorrow.”
Earlier, images posted on social media showed Thai rescue teams practicing extraction drills outside the cave, laying out stretchers, ropes and cables as they prepared for a difficult haul through tight passages.
Complicating the operation, Laos’s meteorology office forecast thunderstorms, with rainfall expected across 60% of Xaysomboun province.
At the same time, Thai rescuers said a fresh unit of specialist divers had arrived in Laos, including members from Thailand, France Indonesia and Australia.
The high-stakes emergency has drawn comparisons to the 2018 rescue of the Thai youth football team that spent 18 days trapped in a flooded cave in northern Thailand before an international operation brought them out alive.
Two divers who took part in the retrieval of 12 young footballers and their coach are now working alongside Laotian volunteers after locals requested specialist personnel and equipment.
Finnish diver Mikko Paasi, who was part of the team that saved the “Wild Boars” football squad in Thailand, said on Wednesday rescuers were “racing against time” inside the cave.
Rain the following day pushed more soil and water into the cave, according to a Laotian logistics staffer for a company supplying vehicles to support the rescue operation.
The staffer said yesterday that if the rains continued, the effort could last “a few more days.” He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fears of reprisal from his employer.
Laos local media reported that several rescue workers have shown signs of exhaustion after spending seven to 10 hours at a stretch inside the cave system, ferrying oxygen tanks, rescue gear and other supplies.
