For the Buddhist monks who keep nightly vigil outside the cave where 12 young boys and their soccer coach remain trapped, the dry weather is a sign their prayers are working.
Members of this tight-knit community in Mae Sai, northern Thailand, know that the return of seasonal monsoon rains will complicate any attempt to rescue the boys, who became stranded deep inside the tunnel network 14 days ago following a sudden flash flood.
The Thai authorities know it too.
Monsoon season typically lasts from July to October. During that time, water levels in Mae Sai, which sits nestled along Thailand’s mountainous border with Myanmar, can rise rapidly, flooding farmland and cutting off entire villages.
The Tham Luang Nang Non caves, where the boys are trapped, act as the town’s natural drainage basin during this period of heavy rains.
The boys and their 25-year-old coach are huddled together in a small chamber four kilometers (2.5 miles) inside of the cave network, with a limited supply of oxygen.
To reach them, expert divers must carefully traverse jagged passageways, occasionally narrowing to the width of a person, forcing divers to remove their breathing tanks from their backs and enter like a pencil, taking extra care not to snag their wetsuit. The tunnels are pitch black. The water is muddy and cold. The whole journey can take up to six hours.
For almost two weeks, authorities have been pumping water from the caves, 24 hours a day. Such is the volume of water extracted that entire nearby fields have been transformed into lakes.
The banks along the road leading to the cave’s entrance are now a freshwater stream, used by exhausted rescue workers each morning to bathe.
Earlier in the week, efforts to lower the water levels had generated an air of optimism. During a press conference Thursday, one Thai official suggested that the kids may even be able to “walk out.”
Such hopes have now vanished, replaced instead with a mounting sense of urgency. People at the large makeshift camp that now surrounds the caves liken the mood to that of a hostage situation.
Dark clouds drift ominously overhead. Weather forecasters predict heavy rains throughout the coming week.
The chamber in which the boys are located is no longer thought safe. Even if they are given enough food to wait out the rainy season, there is no guarantee that the ledge they are sitting on will not be submerged.
There are no easy decisions. But with the flood waters expected to rise in the coming days, a decision will have to be made soon.
“The teams there will have a tipping point where they have to make that call to bring them out. To leave them there would almost certainly result in them drowning,” said one British mining engineer and experienced cave diver, who did not wish to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject.
“The tipping point will be related to how much rain is starting to fall, water levels inside, versus how the boys are doing. They’ll be looking at flow rates, recorded rainfall over the past weeks, months to get a rough indicator of where they’re at, they’ll have a deadline in mind, and then they’ll go for the most unpopular way out,” he added.
Each day rescuers at the camp talk of differing strategies. Drilling holes, expanding the tunnels, pumping out water.
Earlier this week, authorities announced that the boys, the youngest of whom is just 11 years old, would undergo a crash course in scuba training in the hopes that they might be able to dive out.
Source: CNN