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In a dramatic turn of events, five villagers who disappeared in a flooded cave in Laos have been discovered alive by elite divers on Wednesday. Now, rescue teams are in a race against time to extract them and locate two others who are still unaccounted for.
The organization Rescue Volunteer for People announced online, “We’ve found five people alive and all safe. There are still two people we are searching for.”
The group was located in an underground chamber in Xaisomboun province, situated roughly 50 miles north of the Laotian capital, Vientiane, according to a report by CNN.
Although the five have been found, the floodwaters continue to trap them, prompting officials to devise a safe extraction strategy.
To aid in this challenging mission, a contingent of 15 divers, known for their role in the dramatic rescue of a Thai youth soccer team in June 2018, has been deployed. These divers are navigating through treacherous narrow tunnels and unstable conditions to ensure the villagers’ safe return.
The villages went into the cave in the Southeast Asian nation to look for gold — but became trapped when heavy rains suddenly flooded the entrance.
The five survivors are “all healthy and in good spirits, but the extraction is still ahead and it ain’t going to be easy,” Finnish diver Mikko Paasi, who helped rescue the soccer players, wrote on social media.
Rescuers had to carry out a steep 2.5 mile walk just to reach the cave entrance before making their way inside through muddy passageways and narrow tunnels.
Passageways were so tight so rescuers could only go through in a single file.