•A tourist with guides after an open-water diving session
Specialist divers found five of seven people trapped for a week in a flooded cave in Laos alive on Wednesday, with one rescuer saying their extraction from its terminal chamber was the next challenge.
The seven Laotians entered the cave in central Xaysomboun province, northeast of the capital Vientiane, on May 20, according to state media.
They were searching for gold but got trapped inside the cave after heavy rain triggered flash flooding, blocking their exit, it said.
Five men with their clothes, hands and faces covered in mud huddled in a tight passage of the cave, while two rescuers in dive gear and standing in stomach-deep water filmed them, a video posted by Thai rescuer Chakkit Taengtan showed.
“We found five Laotians. Everybody is safe. We’ll continue to provide help,” Thai rescue diver Norrased Palasing said in the video.
Finnish diver Mikko Paasi, also seen in the cave footage, said he and Norrased needed to “dive straight back” and bring the men more supplies to gain strength and prepare to exit the cave.
“This is only a brief relief as the five survivors are still in the terminal chamber, all healthy and in good spirits, but the extraction is still ahead and it ain’t going to be easy,” said Paasi in a social media post.
State-run Lao Security News said rescuers would now bring food and medicine to the five survivors and continue searching for the two others who are missing.
Other Laotian and Thai rescue groups also posted saying five people were found alive.
‘Racing Against Time’
Paasi said earlier today that rescuers were “racing against time” to extract the seven from the cave, which he called an “abandoned gold mine”.
Rescuers needed to “navigate hundreds of meters (yards) of constant restrictions, flood waters, collapse hazards and high risk of contaminated air quality” inside the cave, he said in a Facebook post.
The terminal chamber, where the five were found, was around 300 metres from the exit, he said.
The seven had entered the cave “with resources to stay sub-terrain for several days”, the diver added.
Norrased and Paasi, who arrived at the Laos cave on Monday, were among the rescuers who aided the dramatic 2018 retrieval of a youth football team from a flooded cave in neighbouring Thailand.
The “Wild Boars” team spent nearly three weeks trapped by flash floods in the Tham Luang cave complex in Thailand’s north.
The Laos cave system, located in a remote area, extends deep underground, with multiple levels and narrow passages.
Authorities and villagers have worked to pump water out, but rescue teams had not been able to reach the group earlier this week, according to state media.
By this morning, the water level in the cave had dried up considerably, with rescuers continuing to pump it out, state media said.
Laotian rescuers, local officials and villagers gathered outside the cave before rescue operations resumed today to perform a traditional ceremony, offering chickens and rice alcohol to sacred spirits believed to protect the mountain and rescuers, a rescue group said.
