BANGKOK: The first of five people trapped in a flooded cave in Laos has been rescued, Thailand's MTK emergency service reported late on Friday (May 29).
The four remaining gold miners are to be brought out one by one by rescuers.
The group has been trapped for 10 days several hundred metres from the entrance after heavy rainfall flooded the gold mine and triggered a landslide.
Colleagues who managed to escape raised the alarm, but the mission to rescue them has proved extremely risky because of tight tunnels, high water levels and an acute risk of collapse.
Hopes are meanwhile fading of finding two other men who are still missing.
The Laotian rescue organization Rescue Volunteer for People said that enough water had been pumped out of the cave beforehand to make a safe rescue possible in the afternoon.
A video published by the US broadcaster CNN in the evening showed the mud-covered man slowly climbing out of the mountain, supported by volunteers. The other four men are now to be gradually freed from the gold mine in the remote northern province of Xaisomboun.Procedure intensively rehearsed
Before the rescue, the rescue teams had intensively rehearsed the evacuation procedure.
According to the emergency services, every detail was run through to ensure the safety of both the men and the divers in the cave’s extremely narrow tunnels.
Published photos and videos showed a rescue worker secured to a specially designed stretcher during the exercise, which had been constructed specifically for the extremely narrow passages.Relatives wait for news of their loved ones
Meanwhile, relatives waited anxiously outside the cave for good news.
"I’m so glad they’ve come to help us,” said Samorn Ian, the wife of one of the men, as quoted by CNN.
She said she hadn’t been able to sleep since the accident. "But knowing that my husband is alive makes me so happy.”No sign of the two missing people
For two other missing people, however, there is little hope left.
Rescue teams have now searched around 95% of the tunnel system but have so far found no trace of the two, Finnish cave diver Mikko Paasi told ThaiPBS World. "We don’t have many places left to search,” he explained. The chances are "very slim.”
Paasi is regarded as one of the world’s most experienced cave divers and is helping to coordinate the mission in Laos.
He already played a crucial role in the spectacular rescue of a youth football team from Tham Luang Cave in Thailand in 2018. This time, too, he was among the specialists on the front line.
Paasi emphasised that there were no dry areas in the previously inaccessible parts of the cave where people could have survived for a week, referring to the two men who are still missing. However, the search for them is to continue. - dpa
