As five exhausted men recover side by side in a hospital room in Laos, their account of more than a week trapped underground has become the rescue teams’ best lead in the race to find two others still missing deeper inside a flooded cave.
Rescuers — among them foreign cave divers — said today they are mapping out a hazardous new search, guided by details the survivors have provided about the cave’s constricted, waterlogged corridors. One of the men recalled that in the darkness below, they felt they were “waiting to die”.
A Laotian rescue group said the descriptions shared by the hospitalised survivors were “considered substantial” and were “being used to prepare the search plan for the remaining two people”.
“The hope is that today’s mission will locate both remaining victims,” the group wrote today on social media.
The five were discovered alive on Wednesday, packed into a narrow shaft about 300 metres (984 feet) from the cave entrance in a remote mountainous part of central Xaysomboun province.
State media said they were part of a group of seven who became trapped by flash floods nearly two weeks ago while searching for gold.
Divers brought the first man out on Friday. By yesterday, four others managed to make it out on their own after teams supplied food and medicine and spent days pumping water from the cave, easing the route to the entrance.
Watch: Four people emerge from flooded cave in Laos
Footage released by rescue groups captured the moment they emerged: relatives in tears and rescuers sprinting forward to hug them, before the men were ushered into tents for medical examinations.
Today, the five survivors were being treated together and were “in good condition”, said Malaysian diver Lee Kian Lie.
Mr Lee said teams had questioned the men closely about the cave’s deeper sections in an effort to chart a route toward the remaining pair.
“We will continue to search based on the info we have and perhaps we [will be] able to get to the other two,” said Mr Lee, who joined the rescue operation on Friday.
He said the four who exited yesterday had “walked out themselves because the water [level had] been lowered”.
One of them, identified by Laotian state media as Laen, also said they escaped through sections “where water was already pumped out”.
Yet, he told Lao National Radio from the hospital, hope had been fading before divers reached them.
“We spent three days searching for a way out, but we couldn’t find it. And it was hopeless,” Laen said.
“I said if there is no diving team coming to help, there would be 0% chance of survival. We were just waiting to die.”
The man pulled out on Friday — identified only as Meud — said in a video shared by a rescue group that the two still missing went into the cave several days earlier than the rest and pushed much farther down.
According to Japanese diver Yoshitaka Isaji, today’s operation is concentrating on a tight, flooded passage believed to extend beyond the point where the five survivors were found.
“This submerged passageway is extremely narrow and practically unpassable unless you change your posture. Imagine the space as narrow as a dresser drawer,” Mr Isaji wrote on social media, adding that the muddy water meant “visibility is zero”.
He said teams were continuing to pump water out while also trying to prevent more from pouring in.
“Given the enormous risk, diving would only be a last resort,” he added.
