CNN
By Will Ripley, Rebecca Wright, Kocha Olarn, Isaac Yee, Kara Fox, CNN
Xaisomboun province, Laos (CNN) — After a long and complex operation inside a flooded cave in a remote area of central Laos, on Saturday, the men at the center of the mission did something few expected: they walked out.
It wasn’t what the international rescue operation had planned for.
When the first of the trapped group of five men dived through the flooded tunnels on Friday, the efforts were paused and there was expectation it could be hours, even days before the others emerged.
Instead – after a days-long operation to pump water out of the remote caves bore fruit – the group scrambled their way out. Rescuers, who were about to launch a high-risk plan to guide the villagers out through flooded tunnels to safety, were stunned as they encountered them at the entrance to the caves.
“I was literally putting my wetsuit on to head in when they emerged on their own,” said Australian rescue diver Josh Richards, one of the expert team of divers.
The five went underground more than a week ago searching for gold before being trapped by rising rainwater. For their families, the weekend has brought overwhelming relief.
One local involved in the rescue was trying to find his own father. When he emerged, Thao Oun dropped to his knees and held him tightly. Moments later, as his father was wrapped in a silver and gold emergency thermal blanket before being placed on a stretcher, Oun wiped away a flood of tears – a release of more than a week’s worth of agonizing suspense.
Yet the joy remains incomplete for this community as two other villagers, believed to have entered the cave system earlier than the five rescued men, remain missing.
The diving team – some of whom brought invaluable experience from a dramatic cave rescue in neighboring Thailand in 2018 – had spent days preparing the trapped villagers to navigate an extremely complex and hazardous environment underground.
Narrow rock passages dropped at steep angles into flooded sections of opaque, silty water that Richards compared to coffee. In places, the route narrowed to little more than 60 cm – roughly the width of a refrigerator – forcing rescuers and survivors alike through confined, unstable channels.
None of the villagers had prior diving experience, yet they were faced with getting out of a flooded, subterranean labyrinth after being underground without food and water for nearly a week before they were discovered . While the men managed to keep up their spirits, being underground for more than 10 days took an understandable physical toll. The damp, confined environment left them caked in mud, with some of the men developing skin and intestinal problems.
Ahead of the group’s planned ascent, crouched in darkened, claustrophobic chambers and illuminated only by head torches, rescue divers Norrased Palasing and Mikko Paasi gave the men a tutorial on how to use specialized equipment to navigate their way out, demonstrating how to manage oxygen tanks and use breathing apparatus – a daunting task for novices in a high-stress e