Five Rescued from Flooded Cave After Week-Long Ordeal
Rescue teams in Laos have located five people alive inside a flooded cave. They had been trapped for a week due to heavy rainfall and landslides. Two others from the group remain missing, according to Laotian and Thai rescue teams involved in the operation.
The seven individuals were from Xaysomboun Province in central Laos and entered the cave last Wednesday. They were searching for gold deposits and wildlife but were unable to exit as the entrance was blocked.
Rescue team videos show divers crawling through narrow, muddy passages almost entirely submerged in water. Bounkham Luanglath of Rescue Volunteer for People told the Associated Press that the search for the two missing individuals would continue. ‘I’m still shaking,’ he said in a voice message. ‘Our team has succeeded.’
The cave system, stretching deep underground, is extremely narrow, with some sections only 50 cm wide, according to rescuers. Rescue Volunteer for People stated in a social media post: ‘We have found five people alive and safe. Two others are still being searched for.’
Thai rescuer Kengkach Bangkawong wrote on Facebook that the survivors were found at 4:30 pm local time. Finnish rescue specialist Mikko Paasi previously stated on Wednesday that teams had to ‘navigate hundreds of metres of constant narrow passages, floodwater, potential collapses, and high risk of contaminated air’ in the cave, which he described as an ‘abandoned gold mine’. He estimated the seven individuals were trapped about 300 metres from the exit.
Government media reported that the group entered the cave, located approximately 120 kilometres north of Vientiane capital, last Wednesday.
‘No one owns the area,’ said a Laotian rescuer named Baeng, who requested anonymity for security reasons, according to AFP. ‘Local residents often come here to dig pits and search for food.’
Kengkach was part of the team that successfully evacuated 12 Thai boys and their football coach after they were trapped for two weeks in a flooded cave beneath a mountain in Chiang Rai province, Thailand, in 2018. The extraordinary rescue operation involved over 10,000 experts from various countries and drew global attention. Several films and documentaries were made about the incident, including the feature film ‘Thirteen Lives’ and the documentary ‘The Rescue’.