By David Arellano
2018 was an exciting, confusing and very long year. Africa, I mean, France won the World Cup, the Royal Wedding, Stan Lee died, The Black Panther came out, and everybody was arguing over whether they heard, “Yanny” or “Laurel.” It was obviously “Laurel.” Now that have the important things aside it’s time to move on to something a little more serious, the Thailand cave rescue.
In June, 12 young Thai boys and their soccer coach got trapped in the Tham Luang cave. They were trapped in the cave for nine days before the authorities were able to only REACH the children in the cave.
First, let’s explore all the factors that made this operation such a daunting task. The whole group was almost 3 miles into the subterranean cave. The whole cave had become flooded with water, and the pitch black was making it extremely hard to navigate– not to mention the 2-foot wide spaces they had to crawl through to get to the group. Some of the most experienced divers in the world came to Thailand to help and rescue the children. One of these drivers said that this was one of the top 5 most dangerous caves he’d have to navigate.
Aside from the geographical obstacles the divers also had to bring back the thirteen people trapped in the cave, none of whom knew how to swim let alone scuba dive. Many countries such as Australia, China, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States began to provide supplies to help. The team had to begin giving the boys swimming and diving lessons; most people in Thailand do not know how to swim. During the process of the rescue, Saman Kunan, a Thailand Navy SEAL, died while delivering oxygen in the cave. The authorities began pumping water out of the cave, while this did help many miles of the cave were still under water.
The whole operation took seventeen days to complete in the end all twelve boys and their soccer coach were rescued safely out of the cave. The boys had been in the cave for so long that they had to wear sunglasses to protect their eyes from the sun. After they had brought from the cave they spent a week in the hospital to recover from their ordeal.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/06/world/asia/thai-cave-rescue-divers.html
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