Heavy rains threatened to delay the search for two people missing in a flooded cave in Laos, after the rescue of five other people who were trapped underground for over a week.
Finnish diver Mikko Paasi, one of the first international rescuers to arrive at the site, yesterday said that rains had filled the cave up to the second chamber, preventing divers from entering the cave until pumps can lower the water level.
The seven villagers reportedly entered the cave last week to look for valuable minerals before being trapped by a flash flood that blocked their way out.
One other villager escaped and alerted the authorities.
Rescue teams from Laos and neighbouring Thailand have been working together in the past week at the site in a rugged area in the central province of Xaisomboun, about 120km north of the capital Vientiane.
They were joined by divers from countries including Finland, Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia, France and Australia.
Several of the rescuers previously took part in the complicated 2018 cave rescue in northern Thailand that saved 12 schoolboys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave.
The rescued men are being treated at a local hospital and are doing well, said Malaysian diver Lee Kian Lie yesterday.
“We interviewed them about how the deeper part of the cave looks like.
“We will continue to search based on the information we have, and perhaps we will be able to get to the other two,” he said.
According to rescuers, they have navigated more than 200m into the cave and discovered five chambers in the system.
The five people rescued so far were found in the fifth chamber.
Paasi added that the survivors said there was a narrow crack in the fifth chamber that could be a passage leading to a deeper part of the cave system.
“This was the only place that we haven’t checked in the mine, where the two lost miners could still be,” he said.
“Now there’s a theory that, through that small crack, it still continues, and there’s a sixth chamber, which gives us hope now that, if we could penetrate that small restriction, we might be able to reach the sixth chamber and then see what is there.”
The five people who have been rescued were first found on Wednesday. They were identified by their first names as Khamla, Mued, Ee, Ing and Laen.
The first man was safely evacuated on Friday, guided through a narrow flooded passage by an expert diver.
The remaining four left the cave on Saturday after the water receded enough for them to walk out on their own, rescuers said.
Videos posted by rescuers at the site showed emotional moments as the men emerged one by one from the cave.
Some collapsed on the ground at the cave’s entrance and were hugged by a group of workers who cried in joy. — AP
