Children missing in Thai cave found.

[eloisesparkle]

It appears the children and teacher have been found alive.
Has a miracle happened ?
I am so delighted and hope they will be ok after their horrific ordeal.
It's always nice to see good news as lately all the headlines are of something bad having happened.
Please forgive me if there is already a thread on this topic.

I'm following this guardian live link

I just can't imagine the scene when the divers first appeared. What a moment for the children and the divers. But then the hope of a quick rescue that the children might have had dashed by the reality of 4 months.

It does amaze me how far they must have got it - given all the issues the divers had taking their tanks off. It's not just a gentle walk through a cave.

I am glad they have been found but it's going to be a long and worrying few months.

Get the best geologists and engineers in the world together and drill, drill, drill surely?

It must be a desperately unsanitary and dangerous place.

And wtf was the youth leader thinking?

It does show what international communities can do when they work together towards a common goal.

They are still in the cave though?

I can't understand how in this day and age it can take 4 months to get them out. I wonder if the boys know this? I would be totally hysterical if anyone told me I would have to live on a ledge in a dark cave for 4 months. How awful.

I can't understand how in this day and age it can take 4 months to get them out

Drill through a mountain, take a group of children who can't swim through a cave dive of 2 miles or wait 4 months until the intense monsoon rain stops.

Tough choices.

I know, I do appreciate the logistics. It just seems crazy that we can do amazing things, we can live in space, we can fly to the moon, but we can't get these lads out of a cave on our own planet.

Thing is, I've been to caving gatherings where one of the presentations has been to mourn one of the cave divers known to some of them (I didn't know him). It's one of the riskiest sports, even for people with plenty of experience, so to weigh up each of those risky options to get the kids out will be a really big decision. Personally I'd be happy to wait four months, but then I'm more than happy underground.

news.sky.com/story/thailand-cave-rescue-trapped-boys-must-be-rescued-before-waters-rise-11424755

saying they will be brought out in the coming days .

I hope this is unreliable reporting .

I'm with Damson ,some parts are apparently so narrow that the divers had to take their tanks off to get through ,it sounds v v risky .
And not just for the football team and their poor coach .

No clear surface scares the heck out of me. I've been diving and inside wrecks. If you panic, you're going to die. No surface and no air gap.

I can't imagine what must have been going through their minds in the last 10 days. I can't imagine what options they were thinking about during that time.

One of the news reports says that they are a km underground

I don’t understand when they say that they have swim go through tunnels so narrow that they can’t have oxygen on their back - is that the way the children went to escape the water? It must have been terrifying and difficult.

They got the Chilean miners out by drilling didn’t they?

Imagine the psychological impact of this immensely difficult life/death situation ...yes they are all alive and can gain strength physically but mentally it's like torture....I bet the official rescue team have been advised by the psychologist to only give them minimal information

I don’t understand when they say that they have swim go through tunnels so narrow that they can’t have oxygen on their back

Cave divers carry spare tanks, spare everything. Just in case it fails. They sometimes take their equipment off - it won't sink - and then force it through narrow gaps whilst having their regulator in their mouth.

It's easy for the visibility to drop - any panic and the sediment gets stirred up.

I hope so much they get them out.
I wish there were equipment big enough to at least partially drain the cave.

Ah no I understand that the tunnels are very narrow, just that if that’s the only route for the divers then that must be the route the children took? They must have had an awful time of it to be forced that far into the caves.

There must be a company somewhere in the world that could drain that cave - surely.

The Dutch/Netherlands ? Weren't they called in when the Somerset Levels flooded .
Tho I guess moving such large machinery would be an issue .

Incredible story. What a brave bunch of people those divers are.

Hope they get them all out safely and quickly.

That'll be a huge volume of water, especially if it's still monsoon season and is continually topped up, I can't imagine pumping it out is an option, not till it's dropped most of the way anyway.

Swimming out will be incredibly difficult, Reymenants explained.

“This is one of the more extreme cave dives that I have done. It is very far, and very complex. There is current. The visibility can be zero at times. So getting boys through there one by one, and the risk that they will panic is there,” he told Sky, adding that the swim will be over two kilometres.

“It is not impossible, but the issue is the restrictions — just one person can fit through. So guiding a boy through in front of you could be quite challenging, especially if the rain picks up and there’s a strong flow and the visibility reduces to zero. When it starts raining, the flow is so hard, you can barely swim against it
Right now the kids are too weak for the herculean task anyway, he said. Thai navy doctors arrived in the cave on Tuesday and have been feeding them nutrient-rich food.

“First the boys need to get their strength again, because right now they can’t do anything at all. They have muscle atrophy, they can barely stand up,” Reymenants told Sky^.

That sounds like a terrifying prospect.

They're going to have to "package" them and tow them out ,aren't they ?

I know it's a stupid question but are these caves v v deep down from the surface? I just wonder how long it would take to dig like a mine shaft for example

Daffo: estimate they are 800m underground and over a mile from the entrance. I read that it took the divers 6 hours to reach them.