13 Thais Missing during Caving Expedition

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Captain Swing
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Re: 13 Thais Missing during Caving Expedition

Post by Captain Swing »

You may well find this video a waste of time: nothing much happens in it. It's the kids and some other people loading into vans to go somewhere--I don't know where--it's all in Thai. I don't know if it's before or after they went abroad. But I like a few minutes at the beginning--the kids know they're being filmed but they're not "onstage," not posed. They act like kids--the kids they used to be and hopefully still are.

Captain Swing
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Re: 13 Thais Missing during Caving Expedition

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I hope I'm not wearing you out with these videos--this one is better than the last two or three. It's a very touching interview with Adul.


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Gaybutton
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Re: 13 Thais Missing during Caving Expedition

Post by Gaybutton »

Captain Swing wrote:I hope I'm not wearing you out with these videos
The only one you need to worry about wearing out is me. And you're not wearing me out. If anyone other than me is getting worn out, no law says they have to watch them . . .
fountainhall

Re: 13 Thais Missing during Caving Expedition

Post by fountainhall »

I rarely read the Letters to the Editor columns in the local English newspapers if only because many are more than slightly ill-informed. This was another from a contributor calling himself "Dick and Jane"(!)
Re: "Wild Boars train with Ibrahimovic and LA Galaxy", (BP, Oct 21).

Don't these kids need to go to school? We are bombarded with the need for these kids to be treated normally, to return to their normal lives. Normal, in most cases, means to complete one's basic schooling before getting on with one's life.
Why the Bangkok Post bothered to include this piece of drivel I fail to understand. Or perhaps its editor like the writer does not realise the boys were away during the main school holiday period!
Jun

Re: 13 Thais Missing during Caving Expedition

Post by Jun »

Unsurprisingly they have ended up visiting the highest profile Premier League club, if not the one with the most exciting team at present.
Expect to see them standing respectfully for the inevitable minute's silence before the game.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/20 ... otballers/
Captain Swing
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Re: 13 Thais Missing during Caving Expedition

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A long way from the cave.

fountainhall

Re: 13 Thais Missing during Caving Expedition

Post by fountainhall »

That last vdo comes from a TV programme titled The Pride of Britain where 5 British divers involved in the rescue were presented their awards by the boys. Apparently it had a lot of viewers weeping.

There is a nice piece in the newspaper The Mirror the following morning -
Titan, 12, said: “I just wanted to come back to my normal life, enjoying meals together with my family.”

Life for them has changed dramatically since. Titan went on: “We know so many more people than we know were concerned about us and are very grateful for their thoughts.

“We don’t want to be famous. We want our normal life, just playing football. We promise to be good boys to our parents, we will focus on our education, and above all be good people and contribute to our society.”

Before their ordeal, their favourite Britons were David Beckham, Peter Crouch, Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney. But Dom said: “Now, our favourites are definitely the divers.

“We still love football, but the divers gave us our futures
fountainhall

Re: 13 Thais Missing during Caving Expedition

Post by fountainhall »

Thanks to a poster on sawatdee network I found this article. It is a wonderful summing up of the entire event written dispassionately, skilfully and with a great deal of understanding.

https://www.gq.com/story/thai-cave-resc ... tham-luang
fountainhall

Re: 13 Thais Missing during Caving Expedition

Post by fountainhall »

The heroism of the British divers who helped rescue the boys and their coach from the cave has been recognised in the annual New Year's Honours List.

Richard Stanton and John Volanthen, the first divers to reach the children, have been awarded the George Medal, the second highest civilian gallantry award in the UK. Vern Unsworth, who is suing Elon Musk for libel, and two others have been awarded MBEs. Two others have been awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for exemplary acts of bravery.
Mr Volanthen told BBC News that while his award was much appreciated, from his perspective as a parent, the most important thing was that the boys were rescued.

"I don't think anyone could ask for any greater honour than being able to be a part of the team that returned the Wild Boars [football team] to their families," he said.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-46701985
fountainhall

Re: 13 Thais Missing during Caving Expedition

Post by fountainhall »

We've all seen the photos and videos and read much of the detail of the cave rescue. But what we have known up to now is only the tip of a much larger iceberg. Thanks to a poster on sawatdeenetwork,com, I found this incredible article. And it truly is incredible. It is long and hugely detailed in a way we have never heard before. It reads like a work of fiction that you cannot put down. The difference is it is all true and I urge everyone to read it. I haven't done a word count but it is probably close to 10,000. Reading it has given me a new perspective on what exactly was happening that we knew nothing about. The heroism of everyone involved has taken on a new meaning. I'll quote just two sections -
Anaesthesiology requires more training than most branches of medicine; there is always some risk that when a patient is put under, he or she will never wake up. When the patient is a child, the risks are greater. When the child is yanked along underwater for hours through a dark, cold cave, the risks are incalculable—no one has ever done anything like this before.

Dr. Harry believes the risks of sedating the children beat the risks of not sedating the children. The lead divers believe the same, and the Thais believe the experts know best. The children cannot dive; the children will panic; the children will drown their rescuers and themselves. That is why Dr. Harry is going to do this: inject 12 kids with a sedative so powerful it will knock them out cold.

Ketamine: a horse tranquilizer, an operating-room drug, a soon-to-be cave-rescue pharmaceutical product in its early testing stages on rock-entombed human minors.

If only it were so simple. The children’s drugs will need to be topped up with half-doses along the way. Dr. Harry cannot dive every child out himself, but the divers are not medical doctors. Dr. Harry must give a dozen cave hobbyists and small-business owners a crash course in do-it-yourself anaesthesiology.

If anyone dies—and many divers think they will be lucky to save two or three of the kids—Dr. Harry will bear much of the burden. He is not licensed to practice medicine in Thailand, let alone teach other foreigners to practice. Though Thailand and Australia have offered some assurance that he won’t suffer legal consequences for his young patients’ probable deaths, a conscience and a name are not so easily protected.

Cave divers are solitary creatures, Dr. Harry will later say to the cameras he normally avoids. And as he instructs laymen how to sedate a bunch of boys in the dark before dragging them through a flooded, stalactite-strewn tunnel, Dr. Harry is very alone.

He thinks the drugs might help some children survive. He’s going to try, anyway. That’s the plan. But you never know.
This is how it begins: on the bank where the soccer team is stranded, Dr. Harry takes one of the children away from the rest. He tells the boy he is a good boy, a brave boy, the best boy. He pulls out the needle. Then he pushes it in.

Once the child is unconscious, his mask is strapped on and his head is submerged and sloshed around. One of the lead British divers checks the mask isn’t leaking. Additional precautions are taken: In case the boy wakes up or the passages are too narrow, the child’s arms are bound with cord so it will be harder for him to drown the diver or hurt himself. And in case the diver drops the child when he is bundled into a cloth stretcher, or smacks the child’s head on the ceiling of the cave while they’re diving through it, bubble wrap is stuffed into the hood of the boy’s wetsuit.

The cave diver’s specialty is planning for every case. He doesn’t carry just one regulator or one tank or one flashlight. As for air, he follows the rule of thirds: a third of the total air supply to go in, a third to come out and a third for something to go very wrong.

But every diver understands these words from Ivan, the ageless hippie from Koh Tao: “If you don’t want to die in a cave, there’s only one sure thing you can do: don’t go in.” It is the conceit of exploration to prepare for what cannot be known. You can look out, but you can’t always see.

With a child in one hand and a line in the other, the first diver starts to swim.
https://www.macleans.ca/thai-cave-rescue-heroes/
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