How Ukrainian rescuers helped lift all children from a cave in Thailand to the surface

All 12 children were brought to the surface from the Tham Luang cave complex in Thailand, local media reported. The last to surface was the coach who accompanied the group, and one of the boys.

Photo: Facebook / Ekatol

Four military scuba divers who took part in the operation remained in the cave and also plan to swim out soon, the Thai Army SEAL unit said.

The rescue operation began on July 8. Rescuers had a choice: start rescuing the children as soon as possible before weather conditions worsened, or wait until the rainy season passed.

Diver from Ukraine Vsevolod Korobov participated in a rescue operation in Thailand, where 12 children and their trainer were in a flooded cave. They spent nine days there until the rescuers arrived.

Mr. Korobov, who works as a diving instructor in the Thai city of Phuket, walked a difficult three-kilometer section in a flooded cave and spoke about it BBC News Ukraine.

“They saw that we are useful”

“A group of instructors, in particular, two people from Ukraine - me and my friend Maxim - arrived last Friday as volunteers. Our task was to teach Thai fur seals to dive in such complex caves, since it turned out that they had no experience in such diving. We helped them with this. Seeing that we were useful, the Thai military included us in the support team. We walked through a difficult three-kilometer section in a flooded cave, helped carry equipment, and laid ropes for divers,” said Vsevolod.

Five kilometers is the way to children

It is very difficult to work in this cave. Diving itself begins three kilometers from the entrance. The part where you can dive is a place with extreme conditions even for very trained cave divers. Visibility is very poor there; sometimes you can’t even see the readings of the instruments if you bring them close to your face. You can get confused or stuck - there are a lot of narrow passages.

Another difficulty is that from the last dry room to the place where the children are - 2 kilometers 300 meters. You have to swim against the current and only go back with the current.

Rescuers had to walk a long distance and carry heavy diving equipment. The first section to the flooded place is three kilometers. First you move 500 meters, climbing slippery steps, then you go down with heavy equipment, then you swim 30-40 meters against a very strong current in an underwater tunnel. You cannot row in it using fins; you have to pull yourself up with your hands using ropes laid by the Navy SEALs, who managed to lay them before the cave was completely flooded.

Periodically, ankle-deep or knee-deep on this path you fall into clay or sand. In the water you are sometimes knee-deep, sometimes up to your neck, and so you move to the next dry area, along which you pull cylinders or other cargo. Then you dive into the next passage, where there is no longer such a strong current, it is a little easier to move there.

And the most difficult section is the last kilometer, when you need to pull all the load up the mountain, which is very slippery, among stalactites and stalagmites. This area is very slippery. It's essentially a wet clay slope that you have to climb out onto without falling. Otherwise, you will fly 15-20 meters and fall on the rocks.

After climbing the mountain, you need to carefully walk between the cracks and descend into a narrow place, squeeze yourself and your balloons in there, and swim another passage in zero visibility. And only then do you find yourself in a cell, a “dry room”, from which you walk another 2 and a penny kilometers to the children... This is a route that can be done by people with training.

After the British divers found the children, two army medics went to them at night, brought food, delivered medicines, one of the fur seals stayed with them. We must pay tribute to the coach who organized them, rallied them into a team and helped to survive. Because to be in such conditions for nine days, without food… Of course, they had some food with them, there was water, but not much.

The physical and emotional health of the first eight boys rescued from the flooded cave is not a cause for concern. Raised to the surface, the children underwent all the necessary examinations and passed blood tests.

Two boys were treated for a lung infection. They will be in the hospital for at least a week.

Some of the rescued boys had a low body temperature, one had a weak pulse, but they have all returned to normal. Heat in children is also not observed.

Doctors said that at first the children were fed instant food and energy gels, but now they have been switched to easily digestible food.

So far, they can only see their relatives through a glass partition. As soon as the examinations confirm that the boys are not at risk of developing infections, they will be allowed to see their families. However, they will still have to keep a distance of at least two meters from them.

Due to the fact that the children spent more than two weeks in the dark, going out into the sunlight, they are forced to wear sunglasses.

Why were the children in the cave?

The children's initial goal was teambuilding, they had to go to a place called "Pattaya Beach", write their names on the wall and come back. It is about 5,5 km, and three hours one way and the other are enough. But it began to rain so heavily that the children were cut off from getting out.

They climbed to a place that is not flooded to wait out the rain or wait for help. It’s good that this cave is quite warm - the temperature is about 23-24 degrees. But in general, the conditions are not easy for survival.

The whole world was watching the rescue operation

US President Donald Trump congratulated the Thai Navy on the successful completion of the mission. “What a wonderful moment - everyone freed, great job!” he wrote on Twitter.

The attention of the whole world was riveted to the situation, the readiness to assist in saving teenagers expressed the American entrepreneur Ilon Musk.

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