Local cave dive expert weighs in on dangers of Thailand rescue
In Thailand, rescuers are racing to drain a flooded cave where 12 boys and their soccer coach have been trapped inside for 13 days now. A former Thai Navy diver who joined the operation died, according to a Thai Navy source.
Officials are putting in ropes for the boys as a guide through the cave. New divers are being trained, dams are being built, crews are running pumps day and night but there is no clear plan to get the boys out. The sense of urgency is growing with more heavy rain forecast for this weekend. This cave dive has been compared to the Mount Everest of cave dives. It is dive which would normally take months of training before attempting.
KESQ & CBS Local 2’s Lauren Coronado spoke with Mal Maloney, the only cave dive expert on the west coast. He said there are a number of risk factors in this kind of dive. From little-to-no visibility in certain parts of the cave to strong currents rushing through narrow passageways.
It’s currently taking rescuers approximately six hours to reach the boys and five hours to come out of the cave. Maloney said it would take double that time for the rescues to make the dive if successful. It will be especially time-consuming because the 12 boys trapped inside the cave don’t know how to swim. So the level of instruction they were being forced to absorb in such a short time is daunting. Maloney said he is relieved rescuers have decided against the dive.
“You’re task loading them with skills they’ve never done before and you keep on piling skills upon skills that they’re not comfortable with and that’s just going to lead to panic,” Maloney said. “You put them into an underwater zero visibility situation and that just highers the stress level and the higher the stress level and panic and panic leads to losing the regulator and drowning.”
Maloney added that panic is the number one cause of scuba deaths.
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Noticias en español: Telemundo 15
