But
on trip No. 11, to save one of the last soccer teammates stuck for 18
days deep inside the cave, something went dangerously wrong.
Rescuers
inside an underground chamber felt a tug on the rope — the sign that
one of the 12 boys or their coach would soon emerge from the flooded
tunnels.
“Fish
on,” the rescuers signaled, recalled Maj. Charles Hodges of the United
States Air Force, mission commander for the American team on site.
Fifteen minutes went by. Then 60. Then 90.
As
the rescuers waited anxiously, a diver navigating the 11th teammate
through the underwater maze lost hold of the guide rope. With visibility
near zero, he couldn’t find the line again. Slowly, he backtracked,
going deeper into the cave to search for the rope, before the rescue
could resume.
At last, the survivor got through, safely.
It
was a frightening moment in what had been a surprisingly smooth rescue
of the soccer team, the Wild Boars, who had survived the murky darkness
of Thailand’s Tham Luang Cave, sometimes by licking water off the cold
limestone walls.
“The
whole world was watching, so we had to succeed,” said Kaew, a Thai Navy
SEAL diver who shook his head in amazement at how every one of the
rescues worked. “I don’t think we had any other choice.”
Continue reading the main story
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Interviews
with military personnel and officials detailed a rescue assembled from
an amalgam of muscle and brainpower from around the world: 10,000 people
participated, including 2,000 soldiers, 200 divers and representatives
from 100 government agencies.
It
took plastic cocoons, floating stretchers and a rope line that hoisted
the players and coach over outcroppings. The boys had been stranded on a
rocky perch more than a mile underground. Extracting them required long
stretches underwater, in bone-chilling temperatures, and keeping them
submerged for around 40 minutes at a time. The boys were even given
anti-anxiety medication to avert panic attacks.
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