In June and July 2018, a junior association football team were rescued from Tham Luang Nang Non, a cave system in Chiang Rai province, northern Thailand. Twelve members of the team aged 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old assistant coach entered the cave on 23 June after a practice session. Shortly after they entered, heavy rainfall began and partially flooded the cave system, blocking their way out and trapping them deep within.
Efforts to locate the group were hampered by rising water levels and strong currents; they were out of contact for more than a week. The cave rescue effort expanded into a massive operation amid intense worldwide public interest and involving international rescue teams. On 2 July, after advancing through narrow passages and muddy waters, British divers John Volanthen and Rick Stanton found the group alive on an elevated rock about from the cave mouth. Rescue organisers discussed various options for extracting the group, including whether to teach them basic underwater diving skills to enable their early rescue, or wait until a new entrance to the cave was found or drilled, or wait for the floodwaters to subside by the end of the monsoon season several months later. After days of pumping water from the cave system and a respite from rain, the rescue teams hastened to get the group out of the cave before the next monsoon rain, which was expected to bring additional downpours and was predicted to start around 11 July.
Between 8 and 10 July, all 12 boys and their coach were rescued from the cave by an international team.
The rescue effort involved as many as 10,000 people, including more than 100 divers, scores of rescue workers, representatives from about 100 governmental agencies, 900 police officers, and 2,000 soldiers. Ten police helicopters, seven ambulances, more than 700 diving cylinders, and the pumping of more than one billion litres of water from the caves were required.
Saman Kunan, a 38-year-old former Royal Thai Navy SEAL, died of asphyxiation during an attempted rescue on 6 July while returning to a staging base in the cave after delivering diving cylinders to the trapped group. The following year, in December 2019, rescue diver and Thai Navy SEAL Beirut Pakbara died of a blood infection contracted during the operation.
Background and disappearance
Tham Luang Nang Non is a karstic cave complex beneath Doi Nang Non, a mountain range on the border between Thailand and Myanmar. The system is long and has many deep recesses, narrow passages and tunnels winding under hundreds of metres of limestone strata. Since part of the cave system is seasonally flooded, a sign advising against entering the caves during the rainy season (July–November) is posted at the entrance.
On Saturday 23 June 2018, a group of 12 boys aged between 11 and 16 from a local junior football team named the Wild Boars and their 25-year-old assistant coach, Ekkaphon Kanthawong, went missing after setting out to explore the cave. According to early news reports, they planned to have a birthday party in the cave after the football practice, and spent a significant sum of money on food, but they denied this in a news conference after the rescue. The team was stranded in the tunnels by sudden and continuous rainfall after they had entered the cave. They had to leave some food supplies behind when fleeing the rising water.
Around 7 p.m. that day, head coach and founder of the team Nopparat Kanthawong (), checked his phone, finding about twenty missed calls from parents worried that their children had not come home. Nopparat dialed assistant coach Ekkaphon and a number of the boys in quick succession, without success. Eventually, he reached Songpon Kanthawong, a 13-year-old member of the team who mentioned he was picked up after practice, and that the rest of the boys had gone exploring in the Tham Luang caves. The coach raced up to the caves, finding abandoned bicycles and bags near the entrance, with water seeping out of the muddy pathway. He alerted authorities to the missing group after seeing their unclaimed belongings.
Team members
The members of the trapped team were as follows: