Inside the extraordinary Laos cave rescue mission and the Australian cave diver who will help get them home
It was a miracle discovery, five smiling men, trapped deep within the flooded cave system, but now the efforts turn to brining the five to the surface — and one Australian is joining the mission.
It was the miracle rescue the world thought it would never see again.
Yet again an Australian cave diver is joining the rescue efforts — this time to the bring five men trapped in a flooded Laos cave back to the surface.
Adelaide’s Josh Richards said that “people should be scared, I’m scared”.
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“There’s a whole range of different gas issues that we’re concerned about, the roof and the walls are not particularly stable or well supported,” Mr Richards said.
The discovery overnight in Laos drew parallels with the dramatic 2018 rescue of a junior football team and their coach who became trapped in a cave in Thailand after heavy rain caused flooding.
“Tham Luang in Thailand was a predominantly limestone and sandstone cave, so reasonably well supported,” Mr Richards said. “However, this is mud,” he said of the Laos cave.
After days of painstaking searching, five men were found alive inside the network of flooded caves in Laos.
Specialist cave divers made the extraordinary discovery inside the complex cave system in the Xaisomboun province.
Go Pro footage shows five men perched on a rock, muddy, exhausted but remarkably smiling and alive.
In the video, rescuers speak to the men, ask them their names and check that they are all okay.
The men have been missing for more than a week after entering the caves to hunt for gold on May 19.
The mission to find them has been extremely difficult and complex.
The were found 300 metres from the entrance, which is only wide enough for one person to fit through.
Beyond that, teams had to crawl and move through extremely narrow, dark and difficult passageways.
In some sections it’s just 50 centimetres high for rescuers to crawl through with oxygen tanks and equipment.
“The environment is extremely remote and hostile that starts with four-kilometre jungle track to the site,” Finnish cave diver Mikko Paasi said.
However, the discovery of the survivors have sparked relief and renewed hope but getting them out safely presents an entirely new and complex challenge.
At the same time the search continues for the two men who are still missing.
They are believed to be deeper within the cave system and rescuers have no idea where — or if they are even alive.
“About the search for the other two, we still don’t know the direction that we need to head for,” Metta Tham Rescue head Kengkaj Bongkawong said.
“We might need to sketch a structure of the cave in the same way we have done.”
