#British diver lost caves full
#British diver lost caves tv
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In the end the British team decided there was only one option: sedate the boys to unconsciousness, put them in sealed full face masks, and then bind their arms behind them with zip ties, so if they did wake up and panic en route they wouldn't kill themselves or their rescuers. No one knows how or why, but it put the risk to the half-starved boys in stark relief. In a tragic emphasis of the point, a former Thai Navy Seal named Saman Gunan, an experienced diver, died while shuttling air tanks into the cave. The narrowest pinch point only less than two feet wide. Some of the sumps were more than 50 feet deep. Even the Thai Navy Seals who managed to make it back from the boy's cavern felt diving them out of the tunnel with all its twists and turns, vertical passages and snags was impossible. The only path left was to dive the boys and their coach out. (Meet the super climbers who came to the rescue on the 'Killer Mountain')ĭuring the 10-days before the boys were found, Royal Thai Navy SEALs and volunteer divers from several countries worked 12 to 14 hours a day, surfacing in each cavern to check for the boys. Teams of volunteer rock climbers, even famed bird-nest collectors of Libong Island, had scoured the mountain's deep sinkholes looking for an alternative route to the boys. But it was deemed too complicated and too dangerous. One plan involved drilling a tunnel into the cavern similar to the one that saved the Chilean miners in 2010. That was ruled out when divers measured oxygen levels in the cave and found they'd already fallen to 15 percent from the normal 21 percent in the atmosphere. One plan was to stock the boys with food to last for six months until the water subsided. The boys would have to pass through at least a half mile of passages that were completely flooded to the ceiling. The doctor and three Seals had run out of air on the way in and would stay with the boys until the end. Seven Thai Navy Seals, including a doctor, struggled to reach the kids the next day with food and medical supplies and began trying to strengthen them for what came next. (Meet the one-handed champion who is reinventing rock-climbing.) For the next four days the international divers and the Seals worked 12 to 14 hours in the cave inching their way forward a meter at a time in total darkness, surfacing in each cavern to check for the boys.

He and his diving partner, ex-fireman Richard Stanton, arrived the Wednesday after the boys went missing on Saturday, and slowly, steadily began pulling themselves upstream, fixing heavy climbing rope along the route for others to follow. British diver John Volanthan, the IT consultant, believed Tham Luang would be no different. Ben Reymenants, a Belgian expat diver from Phuket, was an early volunteer, and told a reporter it was like 'dropping to the bottom of the Colorado River and hand over hand fighting your way upstream.'īecause of the extreme lethality of the sport, cave diving rescuers tend to be the undertakers of the caving community, far more accustomed to retrieving dead bodies-at times their friends-than rescuing live ones.

#British diver lost caves torrent

One of the boys had mentioned a popular cavern called Pattaya Beach before he disappeared, but that was another half mile deeper inside, and the divers were thwarted by a torrent of muddy water pouring in from that direction. The Thai Navy Seals, along with a group of European expat technical divers who ran dive shops among Thailand's lush coastal islands were struggling to push past a large cavern that was the at end of the typical tourist route about a half mile inside the cave. The situation at Tham Luang, however, was grim.

Heavy monsoon rains were filling the cave with water, and the team built an elaborate system to pump as much water out as possible. 'Jason has only been able to make contact through WhatsApp with his partner.Thai rescue team members survey one of the caverns inside the massive Tham Luang cave system. 'The operation escalated so quickly and I have been wracked with worry following the updates.

#British diver lost caves tv

'The little Thai boys were so slim, everyone who saw it on TV will understand. Mrs Mallison said Jason had little idea of the complex operation which needed to be carried out in Thailand and only came to terms with it when he got there. 'I have had sleepless nights, waking up early in the morning just to keep checking what is happening.' 'It is so emotional for the family watching the news for updates and I am so glad it is now over.

His beaming mother Anne, speaking at her home in Huddersfield, West Yorks., said the family could not be prouder of her son's unbelievable achievements. The brave diver, who previously rescued six British cavers from Mexico's Cueva de Alpazat cave system, flew out with his friend Chris Jewell - both members of the renowned Cave Diving Group, Britain's oldest amateur association of subterranean divers.