Yahoo News Thai cave rescue news: Navy divers scramble to clear passage as search for 12 boys and football coach enters ninth day
Rescue teams desperately scrambled to clear a constricted passageway for divers deep inside a flooded cave as the search for 12 boys and their football coach entered its ninth day.
The Thai navy said on Monday that divers were making progress through a key passageway inside the flooded mountain cave in northern Thailand, where the group went missing.
On Sunday night they had reached a bend where the kilometre-long passage splits in two directions, the navy said, and divers are aiming to reach a sandy chamber on higher ground where it is believed the group may have been able to wait safely.
Aside from belongings left at the mouth of the cave and handprints on cave walls, there has been no trace of them found since.
Heavy rains that flooded key passages are believed to have trapped them and have thwarted the search.
When water levels dropped Sunday, the divers went forward with a more methodical approach, deploying a rope line and extra oxygen supplies along the way.
"The SEAL unit last night reached the T-junction and today they will press ahead to the left, but one obstacle we've found is a very small hole which we need to widen so that people can go through," Chiang Rai governor Narongsak Osatanakorn told reporters on Monday.
"As of now we have not yet reached Pattaya Beach," he said.
He added that an operations centre has been set up in what rescuers call the cave's third chamber, about 1.7 kilometres (a mile) from the cave's entrance.
"I hope that today we will continue to have another good day. It will be even better if everything else could run smoothly.”
He said the passageway the divers are making their way through goes upward in some places and downward in others and is extremely narrow. It is difficult for divers with all their gear to fit through.
Teams have been working to pump out water as well as divert groundwater. Other efforts have focused on finding shafts on the mountainside that might serve as a back door to the blocked-off areas where the missing may be sheltering.
Groups have been combing the mountainside looking for fissure that might lead to such shafts. Several have been found and explorers have been able to descend into some, but so far it is not clear whether they lead to anywhere useful.
Experts in cave rescues from around the world continued to gather at the site. An official Australian group has now followed a U.S. military team, British cave experts, Chinese lifesaving responders and several other volunteer groups from various countries.
Doctors say the boys could survive for many days without food, but much would depend on whether they found water clean enough to drink.
