DEEP BREATH Nightmarish vids shows suffocatingly tight & flooded passages rescuers are crossing to reach seven stranded in Laos cave
EERIE videos of the Laos cave where seven villagers are trapped reveal suffocatingly tight tunnels filled to the brim with water.
Elite rescue divers have joined the desperate mission to save the men, who reportedly got stranded while searching for gold.
They entered the cave in Xaisomboun province on May 19, but flash flooding led to landslides which has sealed their exit for seven days.
Nightmarish footage shows the dangerous dives ahead of them, with flooded cave corridors blocked entirely by murky water.
Some passages shrink to just 23 inches wide, meaning rescuers will need to crawl to make any headway.
One rescuer can be seen submerging himself in an alarmingly narrow section before he is followed by the person recording.
When they come back up to the surface, they have barely enough space to breath.
The same rescuers who helped in the 2018 intense cave rescue of a young football team in Thailand are now battling in pitch-black conditions, razor-sharp rock and choking floodwater to save the trapped men.
Kengkard Bongkawong, head of operations for Thailand’s Metta Tham Rescue, said the conditions are brutal.
“The route is not complicated but the problem is the space. It’s so narrow that we have to crawl and tilt to pass through; also the rocks are really sharp,” he said.
The delicate operation will require them to continue squeezing and holding their breaths through the deadly 1,115 foot tunnel.
According to investigators, they have so far navigated 330 foot into the cave and believe the villagers may be trapped around 100 feet on from the furthest point currently accessible.
Challenging mountainous terrain and heavy rain have hampered efforts, as rescue groups work non-stop to pump water out of the labyrinth and lay ropes for rescuers.
It is located around 75 miles north of the country’s capital Vientiane, and reaching the cave’s entrance requires a roughly 2.5-mile steep uphill walk.
There has been no contact with any of the trapped men thus far, but they are believed to be alive on “an elevated ledge inside the cave that benefits from continuous airflow”.
“I’m confident that they are still alive because there is still air in the cave,” he said.
The veteran diver was part of the team behind the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue in Thailand, where 12 boys and their football coach were saved after more than two weeks trapped underground.
Teams in Laos have managed to push to within 40 metres of where they believe the group is sheltering.
But they were forced to retreat on Sunday night as relentless rain sent sediment pouring into the already narrow tunnels.
Kengkard said: “The gap is only 50cm wide, it’s really small, so we need to clear out the sediment from this spot first. The gap is quite low to crawl through, and we have to tilt to at a 45 degree angle.”
Reinforcements have since arrived, including Finnish diver Mikko Paasi and Thai specialist Norrased Palasing – both veterans of the 2018 rescue.
“The difficulty of this operation depends on the rain … We had to retreat earlier because of the water level rising in the cave,” said Thai rescue technician Jakkrit Taengtang.
There has been no official confirmation on why the villagers went into the cave.
But Bounkham Luanglath of the Lao rescue group said that the cave was frequented by local residents looking for gold.
Authorities have repeatedly warned people against entering the cave out of safety concerns.
The average per capita income in Laos of about $2,000-2,500 (£1,500-1850) is among the lowest in Southeast Asia, and it is much less in rural areas.
Laos is not known as a major gold producer, but its mining industry is sizable considering the country’s developing economy.
The mining sector is fueled by foreign direct investment, largely from neighboring Thailand and China.
Copper is a major export, and mining for rare earth elements, needed for most modern technologies, has become more common in Laos recently.
