Mae Sai, Thailand—Eight of the 12 young footballers have emerged from the Tham Luang cave complex yesterday.
Four more boys of the “Wild Boar” football team and their 25-year-old coach remain trapped as rescue workers dived deep inside the flooded cave site for a second straight day Monday.
Sunday’s surprisingly quick extraction of the initial batch of four, who were guided out of a network of flooded tunnels by elite divers, fuelled optimism that the others would also be quickly rescued.
“All the equipment is ready. Oxygen bottles are ready,” rescue operations chief Narongsak Osottanakorn told reporters on Monday afternoon after announcing the second phase of the rescue bid had begun.
Thais have been fixated on the crisis, hoping desperately for the safe return of the 12 boys and their coach after they ventured into the Tham Luang cave complex after practice and became trapped by rising waters on June 23.
The saga has also dominated global headlines, with the team spending nine days unaccounted for inside the cave before British divers found the emaciated and dishevelled group huddling on a muddy bank above the flooding.
Authorities then struggled to determine the best way to save the “Wild Boar” football team, with the group stuck on a shelf more than four kilometers inside the cave in pitch darkness.
Among the ideas were drilling an escape route through the mountain, or leaving them for months until the monsoon season ended and the flooding subsided.
But with oxygen levels inside dropping to dangerous lows and the prospect of heavy rains flooding the area completely, authorities decided they had to move quickly and take the group out through the water-filled tunnels.
Dozens of foreign divers and other experts from around the world were brought to help the rescue effort, working alongside Thai Navy SEALs.
Narongsak described Sunday’s initial rescue bid as “D-Day” when it was launched, and there were fears that any one of many potential pitfalls could prove deadly.
Among these were that none of the boys had scuba diving experience, and that they could easily panic while swimming underwater in darkness.
The death of a former Thai Navy SEAL diver who ran out of oxygen in the cave on Friday underscored the danger of the journey even for professionals.
But after the first four emerged late on Sunday afternoon, hopes began to rise of a fairytale ending to the ordeal.