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Just hours after a boys football team was rescued from a partly flooded cave in northern Thailand, water rushed back into the mouth of the vast underground cave network, Thai officials said.
Chiang Rai provincial acting Gov. Narongsak Osatanakorn, the local official in charge of the extensive search-and-rescue operation, said crews had to quickly evacuate the Tham Luang Nang Non cave as the first chamber refilled with water, soon after the last members of the soccer team and their coach were taken out Tuesday.
Thai military officials directly involved in the operation said the main pump that was being used to decrease water levels inside the cave suddenly failed, and the cave began filling up with water from the heavy rain that day in northern Chiang Rai province.
Royal Thai Navy members and support teams barely made it out in time and were forced to leave behind about 300 air tanks in the cave, said the officials.
Had the boys been led out by rescuers a couple hours later, they would have had to swim more than twice the distance – about a mile instead of a half-- which Narongsak said he believes might have been impossible because some of the boys were too weak to really swim or walk.
He called it a miracle that all 12 boys survived the ordeal, according to ABC News.
The boys, ages 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old soccer coach became trapped inside Tham Luang Nang Non, Thailand’s longest cave, during a hike June 23.
The cave's 6-mile-long labyrinth of chambers and passageways stretch all the way into neighbouring Myanmar.
It’s believed the coach often took the teammates of the Wild Boar youth football team into the cave's main entrance in Khun Nam Nang Non Forest Park for fun excursions after practice.
But as the group ventured deeper into the cave that Saturday afternoon, the sky opened up and it began to rain.
The downpour sent floodwater rushing into the mouth of the cave and cut off their exit route.
The group forged ahead until finding a dry, raised slope where they remained stranded in total darkness for days.