HEAVY RAINS THREATENED to delay the search for two people missing in a flooded cave in Laos on Sunday, after the rescue of five other people who were trapped underground for more than a week.
Finnish diver Mikko Paasi, one of the first international rescuers to arrive at the site, told The Associated Press that rains had filled the cave up to the second chamber, preventing divers from entering the cave until pumps can lower the water level.
Making the situation even more difficult, a drainage pump broke down, said fellow diver Yoshitaka Isaji of Japan.
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 football coach from a flooded cave.
The rescued men are being treated at a local hospital and are doing well, Malaysian diver Lee Kian Lie, who is taking part in the operation, told the AP on Sunday.
“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 200 metres into the cave and discovered five chambers in the system. The five people rescued so far were found in the fifth chamber.
Paasi told the AP that the survivors said there is 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 during a video interview.
“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.”
Isaji explained the difficulties of such an endeavour.
“The area between the fifth and sixth chamber is extremely narrow, and no one has seen its shape yet.
“Furthermore, it’s a narrow space, and of course, it’s muddy water, so visibility is absolutely zero. I’ve also heard that the shape is such that you have to twist your body to get through.”
He suggested that even if rescuers could get through and find another trapped person, it would be extremely difficult to bring them out. In such a case, he said, a plan would probably involve getting food and water to those trapped and waiting for the passage to be drained.
Isaji also mentioned the possibility that the two missing villagers are not actually in the cave at all, since they were said to have moved separately from the five rescued people.
The five people who have been rescued were first found 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 online on Saturday 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 with joy.
Later moments showed them lying on a stretcher, wrapped in foil blankets and fitted with oxygen masks before being transported out of the site.