Updated ,first published
Vientiane, Laos: One of seven men trapped for more than a week in an extremely narrow, flooded cave system in Laos has been rescued alive.
The breakthrough on Friday night local time demonstrates that survivors can be saved and could pave the way for more to be removed in the coming hours and days.
Video of the survivor being helped out of the cave mouth shows a man soaked and weak, but still able to walk with help.
He was one of five known survivors. Two more men, named Bay and Lup, were still missing.
“We will continue until dawn,” a member of the search and rescue team told this newspaper.
Evacuations of the other four were later suspended until Saturday because they were not ready, said Chakkit Taengtang of the Sai Than Association, one of the Thai rescue organizations at the site.
The successful extraction came after additional expert divers were brought in from overseas, including Australian Josh Richards. The extensions were transported by helicopter to the remote location, avoiding the diabolical mountain roads.
The five survivors were discovered by divers on Wednesday afternoon to jubilant applause from their families waiting in the nearby village of Phanthai.
But getting them out of the maze was another matter.
Finnish diver Mikko Paasi, a central figure in the search and rescue effort, is also a veteran of the famous 2018 Thai cave rescue that saved 12 boys and their soccer coach.
Paasi told this newspaper that saving the lives of men in Laos was even more complex than in Thailand due to the extreme and unrelenting claustrophobia.
“If it rains, you’re going to drown there,” he said a day before the successful extraction.
It is still unclear whether the freed man had to dive long distances to get out, or whether a new generator brought in Thursday helped pump enough water to make the process safer.
Rescuers pumped water from the corridors of the flooded cave on Friday, but an early morning storm complicated their work.
The men, seven fossils from three small villages in Xaisomboun province, had been sealed inside the cave since rain flooded the chambers and cut off the passageways on May 20 and 21.
Zach Hope is a Southeast Asia correspondent. He is a former Brisbane Times reporter.Connect by email.
