AFP and AP, VIENTIANE and BANGKOK
Five people stuck in a flooded cave in central Laos for more than a week were found alive, rescuers said yesterday, but two others are missing.The villagers entered the cave in Xaisomboun Province on Wednesday last week, but heavy rain triggered flash flooding that blocked the exit and trapped seven people, Lao and Thai rescue teams involved in the operation said.Bounkham Luanglath of the Lao organization Rescue Volunteer for People, which has been working closely with local authorities in the rescue efforts, told reporters that five people were found safe and alive, but two more are still missing, and the search would continue for them.
Finnish rescue diver Mikko Paasi, center, listens as other rescue workers discuss a mission to reach people trapped in a cave in Laos’ Xaisomboun Province on Tuesday.
“I’m still shaking. Our team made it happen,” he said in a voice message.A video posted by a Thai rescue group involved in the mission appeared to show the moment divers emerged from the water and discovered the trapped people.
In the footage, the trapped people, each wearing a headlamp, were sitting on a rock surrounded by floodwater.Earlier yesterday, a specialist diver involved in the operation said that they were “racing against time” to extract the seven people .“If all the possible safety matters can be met today, we are considering a final search dive into the last chamber to locate the lost seven,” Finnish diver Mikko Paasi wrote on social media.“We are racing against time as today marks the seventh day and the way in is full of challenges,” added Paasi, one of the rescuers who aided the dramatic 2018 retrieval of a youth soccer team from a flooded cave in Thailand.The Laotian villagers were searching for gold, but instead got trapped inside the cave — what Paasi called an “abandoned gold mine” — after heavy rain triggered flash flooding, blocking their exit.Authorities and villagers had worked to pump water out, but rescue teams were not able to reach the group, state media said on Monday.By yesterday morning, the water level in the cave had dried up considerably with rescuers continuing to pump it out, the state-run Lao Economic Daily reported.Inside the cave, “you have to navigate hundreds of meters of constant restrictions, flood waters, collapse hazards and high risk of contaminated air quality,” Paasi said.
