Divers Rescue a Youth Football Team from a Flooded Cave

On 23 June 2018, twelve members of a youth football team aged eleven to sixteen entered the Tham Luang Nang Non cave system in northern Thailand alongside their twenty-five-year-old assistant coach. Shortly after they ventured inside the limestone complex beneath the Doi Nang Non range, sudden seasonal rains began to flood the subterranean chambers. The rising waters blocked their path back to the entrance and cut off communication with the outside world, prompting a search when the group failed to return.

The search operation drew personnel from around the globe, eventually involving well over a thousand people, including military units, police officers, and international cave-diving specialists. Strong currents, murky floodwaters, and narrow passages made navigation treacherous for rescue crews, who had to set guide ropes while industrial pumps removed hundreds of millions of litres of water from the caverns. On 2 July, British cave divers John Volanthen and Rick Stanton located the missing group alive on an elevated ledge about four kilometres inside the complex, where the boys had survived for nine days without fresh supplies.