12 boys lost in flooded Thai cave

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Thanks for all the info. Too bad I wasn't the teacher because I would have got to the less than 1 meter tall section and said "The cave ends here for me" :)
 
an interesting read from the BBC: Key questions on Thai cave rescue

Thanks for the link. Getting help from the subject matter experts could be one of the key success of the rescue, such as:

1. Getting the two world best British cave divers who found & led the rescue effort, John Volanthen and Richard Stanton.
2. The two leaders also “are believed to have asked for Australian Richard Harris, a cave diver and anaesthetician, to assist in preparing the boys”.
3. “Thailand was fortunate that an experienced caver Vern Unsworth has explored the Tham Luang cave complex extensively, and lives nearby. He was on the scene the day after the boys disappeared, and suggested that the Thai government needed to invite expert divers from other countries to help.”
 
A little bird told me. I have no reason to not believe them.

The little bird could be right, according to:
Key questions on Thai cave rescue

“The Thai navy divers who went down initially struggled, because both their experience and equipment were for sea diving, which is very different. They were driven out of the caves by rapidly rising flood water, and finding the boys seemed a hopeless cause.

Once foreign divers arrived, from many different countries, the Thai authorities allowed them to devise first the search, and then the enormously complex rescue. It was a huge logistical operation involving hundreds of people, building guide rope and pulley systems, putting in power and communication cables.”
 
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I have been covering the story for X-Ray Mag, liaising with the British Cave Rescue Council and the Cave Diving Group. These are genuine reports of what the Brits have been up to. Tham Luang Nang Non Cave

Thanks for the link.

Had Elon Musk seen this picture & talked to Rob Harper in time and had any of the boys unable to crawl out of such restriction, I bet he would have come up with a flexible, waterproof capsule that to fit & slide through such restriction, instead of the “wild boar” submarine that won’t fit through such restriction.

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I hope that the cave divers could discuss their dive in detail with a diver audience in mind, rather than a general audience for documentary purposes. As a rescue diver having no tech or cave experience but having read so much about it, I have so many questions about the planning and equipment!

  1. This particular dive site seems to be unique, with multiple dives interspersed with short surface intervals required to progress into the cave. How did both the OC and rebreather (CCR or SCR?) deal with repetitive shallow and somewhat deeper dives in terms of deco planning?
  2. What sort of challenges did the rebreather diver face when working with an OC team and tending to the victims, who are on OC face masks?
  3. How was the strategy developed for staging air and deco/oxygen bottles? It's still not clear to me whether the bottles staged for divers were air or nitrox, and whether 100% 02 was used by divers at any point (aside from surface crews possibly pumping O2 into the cave air pockets).
  4. Were there multiple chambers and pathways through the cave network?
 
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