Four gold miners who had been trapped for 10 days in a flooded cave in Laos managed to walk out on their own after water levels finally receded enough for them to make their way to safety. The dramatic rescue came just as international dive teams were preparing to go in and extract them.
Seven men had entered the cave in Xaisomboun province to search for gold when flash flooding trapped them inside. After days of pumping water out of the cave, conditions improved enough for five of the seven to be rescued. Finnish diver Mikko Pasi, who was part of the rescue operation, filmed the moment the survivors emerged from the cave, looking weak but relieved.
The survivors were taken away on stretchers to hospital, tired, hungry and sore but lucky to be alive. The emotional scenes of the miners embracing their loved ones who had been waiting at the cave entrance for days moved rescuers and onlookers alike.
Divers and rescue teams from around the world had responded to help, including several who took part in the famous 2018 cave rescue of 12 schoolboys and their football coach in Thailand. These experienced rescuers brought food, water and electrolytes to the trapped men and taught them how to use diving gear underground.
The cave entrance is extremely small and narrow, requiring rescuers to dive through a flooded tunnel down a sharp slope. A rescue station was established in a chamber approximately 200 metres inside the cave from which operations were coordinated.
However, two men remain missing and the situation is becoming increasingly urgent. The search area is about 20 to 25 metres deeper into the cave beyond where the survivors were found, in an area believed to be heavily flooded. Rain has begun to fall, the same kind of rain that caused the initial flooding, threatening to undo the progress made by pumping operations.
Rescuers are working to get pumps deeper into the cave to drain the water and reach the area where they believe the two missing miners may be located. However, the men have not yet been located and the worsening weather conditions are adding a critical element of urgency to what has become one of the most dramatic cave rescue operations since the Thai cave drama eight years ago.