MAE SAI, Thailand — Forecasts of heavy rain could force rescuers to try to bring out a dozen members of a young soccer team from a flooded cave in northern Thailand even though officials concede that the boys have not had enough training in diving to make the perilous journey through narrow, water-filled passages.
“They cannot dive at this time,” Chiang Rai Gov. Narongsak Osottanakorn told reporters late Friday.
He said that a British diver who returned from the cave late in the evening reported that the boys were still in good health and that oxygen levels in the cave were stable for now. Officials are also working to get a 3-mile cable into the cave to help replenish the oxygen supply.
The 12 boys and their coach have been trapped in the cave since June 23 after water levels rose and forced them to take refuge on an internal plateau inside.
Narongsak said experts, who themselves have made the difficult journey, were teaching them the rudiments of diving, but that the boys were not yet capable of an arduous and complicated mission.
The boys are 11-16 years old and their coach is 25. However, not all of them can swim and some areas of the cave network where they disappeared after going exploring following a soccer game are still flooded all the way to the ceiling.
While the governor stressed that rescue teams want only “minimal risk” before attempting to bring the boys out, forecasts of heavy monsoon rains this week could force their hand.
“If it rains and the situation is not good, we will try to bring the boys out,” Narongsak said.
Thai authorities are also racing to pump out water from the cave, but with more rains forecast to hit the situation has become more urgent.
“We are afraid of the weather and the oxygen in the cave,” he said. “We have to try to set a plan and find which plan is the best.”
The danger was underscored Friday when a retired Thai navy SEAL diver, who was working to rescue the boys, died from a lack of oxygen in an overnight mission.
Thai navy SEAL commander Arpakorn Yookongkaew said the volunteer diver, Saman Kunan, had been placing compressed air tanks along an exit route to assist the boys in their escape from the cave.
The 38-year-old retired diver, whose own oxygen ran out, was found unconscious about 1 a.m. Friday about a half-mile from where the young boys are huddled. Efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.
At the cave site, a makeshift village of volunteers has sprung up alongside military and medical rescue coordinators. Dozens of locals are serving up food, water and medicine to rescue teams and the scores of media members who have descended on the remote forest park.
A medical tent is available on site, staffed by a rotating group of doctors and nurses from Mae Sai, the nearest town. Even free haircuts are being given away on plastic chairs under a tent, and a local cafe brought in an espresso and cappuccino machine to make fresh coffee.
"This is my backyard," said Brandon Fox, a 36-year-old from Michigan who lives in Mae Sai and has been coming to the site daily to help out with everything from trash collection to translation. "I’m here to help out in any way I can." Fox, who works with an aid foundation, has lived in Thailand for 14 years and speaks fluent Thai.
On Thursday, overzealous volunteers working on their own arrived on the site and began pumping water into the ground, forcing it back into the partially flooded Tham Luang Nang Non cave complex.
"They may have some belief that their techniques are effective for groundwater drainage, but anything that is not in the plan must be discussed with us first," Narongsak told Thai media. "We are racing against water (that is) flowing into the cave although we have plugged its channels."
The worsening conditions concern rescuers and volunteers.
"I’m worried about the rain," said Visunlaya Songjang, 59, a volunteer from Mae Sai.
A former nurse and current director of the division of health for Mae Si, she was working at a stand providing donated medicines and small items such as underwear and socks.
"We are all here to help the children in the cave. We hope they will come outside soon," she said.
Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard and John Bacon
