#Ben Reymenants | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

newstfionline · 6 years

Text

These divers had a pretty chill life in Thailand. Then came the cave rescue mission.

By Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin, Washington Post, July 17, 2018

CHIANG RAI, Thailand--Longtime dive school partners Mikko Paasi and Ivan Karadzic were on different continents when they got the calls for help.

Paasi, 43, rushed to this northern Thai city from Malta on July 2, his eighth wedding anniversary, to meet up with Karadzic, who had cut short a vacation cave-diving near the Thai province of Krabi, and one of their close friends, Erik Brown, a Canadian diver.

The Thai government, the divers said, had told them it needed their expertise and specialized equipment for an audacious mission: to locate and ultimately, it was hoped, extricate 12 young boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave by diving them out.

Part of a small, tightknit group of technical divers used to a laid-back life on the resort island of Koh Tao, the three eventually became a crucial part of the effort to shepherd the boys through the cave’s narrow, mud-clogged passages, as the world waited and watched. U.S. military officials described them as among the world’s top cave divers, whose niche passion helped pull off an undertaking many thought would end in multiple deaths.

“If you can use the skill set to help in any way you can, you have to,” said Brown, 36. “Lots of people would have done it--we just happened to be really close.”

Koh Tao, the trio’s base in the Gulf of Thailand, has lured divers since the late 1980s with its clear aquamarine waters, sunny weather and easy access to dive spots. Jim Donaldson, a partner and manager at Big Blue Diving, a Koh Tao dive school, estimates that there were just six dive shops on the eight-square-mile island in 2000, a year after he arrived, compared to about 65 now.

“It just really absolutely exploded,” he said.

Koh Tao’s status as a dive capital has followed Thailand’s transformation into a global tourism hub. Last year, more than 35 million people visited the Southeast Asian country, according to the national tourism authority, accounting for some 12 percent of its gross domestic product.

Karadzic, 44, was just another tourist when he visited Koh Tao in 2006 on a recreational-diving holiday from his home in Denmark. The trip, he said, was life-changing.

“I was sucked back into diving,” he said in an interview from Koh Tao, where he’d returned last week after the last group of boys was freed from the cave and recovering along with the others in a hospital.

He quit his job in Denmark, sold his apartment and moved to Koh Tao to become a dive instructor. He started teaching others to dive in 2007 and now runs a technical diving school with Paasi. Brown runs his own professional cave-diving school on the island.

As news spread of the boys’ disappearance on June 23, Paasi and his friends put out a call to action on their Facebook pages. They first asked for specialized gear that could help Thai navy divers navigate the Tham Luang cave complex outside Mae Sai, in northern Thailand, where the boys were stranded.

Dive shops on Koh Tao readily obliged.

“Everyone came together,” Donaldson said. “We all put equipment through, and they were desperate. They obviously needed a lot of equipment up there.” Brown and another diver involved in the rescue effort, Ben Reymenants, originally from Belgium, had worked previously at Big Blue Diving, he said.

Soon, though, it was clear that the Thai Navy SEALs, trained for open-water diving, did not have the skills to properly search the flooded cave chambers for the boys. The call changed from one for equipment to one for able divers, Karadzic said. The divers started making plans to travel to Mae Sai and urged others in their network to join them.

“Thamluang urgently needs STRONG diving volunteers!!!!” the Finnish-born Paasi wrote in a Facebook post a day before he left Malta, attaching a hand-drawn, cross-sectional map of the cave.

Describing the job, he wrote: “You must be able to: know how to breathe through a regulator and pull yourself using the guide rope against cold (~ 20C) and strong current, in low visibility without panicking.”

Karadzic and Brown arrived in Chiang Rai together on the morning of July 2. Hours later, two British cave divers found the boys, emaciated and huddled on a slippery outcrop above the water. The search mission was instantly transformed into a rescue mission. Karadzic, Brown and Paasi worked with a team of 15 others, including British divers and Thai Navy SEALs, whom officials described as “all-stars.”

During the three days it took to pull the boys and their coach from the cave, Paasi was stationed deep inside, helping move the sedated boys swaddled in flexible stretchers from one dive spot to the next.

“Special people, special skills and special equipment got together,” Paasi said.

The core group of 18 divers ferried the boys to a larger team of international rescuers, who then hooked the boys one by one into a complex belay system and transported them through the cave’s dry chambers, across fields of rocks and boulders.

Since divers spoke mainly in English, interpreters were needed to ensure that 54-year-old Tan Xiaolong, a Chinese diver stationed with U.S. Air Force rescuers receiving the boys as they emerged from the water, would understand all the commands.

“The Thai side also sent interpreters who could translate Chinese into Thai,” Tan said.

But there was one command that needed no translation. Tan was the diver tasked with holding a static guide rope leading out of the cave so he could feel the tug signaling when a diver was bringing a boy out of the water and preparing to pass him to the next stage.

“It was clear and strong, with a distinct rhythm,” he said of the first time he felt it. “At this moment, I knew the first child had been successfully rescued, and I felt very moved.”

Back on Koh Tao, the Facebook pages of the divers and dive shops were flooded with praise and encouragement in Thai and English as each boy emerged safely.

“Watching it here in Koh Tao, watching it sort of live as it unfolded, and knowing that these boys were involved helping get these kids out--it was cool,” Donaldson said. “It was very cool.”

#Thailand #Koh Tao #divers #cave divers #boys in Thai cave

2 notes · View notes

ilkgecemsin-blog · 3 years

Text

Elanur : Bela

Merve : Bella

Reymen : Ela

Yasin : Ala

Annem : Eba

Ben : Bıhtıh ya

0 notes

hackernewsrobot · 6 years

Text

A rescue diver on what it was like to save the Thai boys in the cave

https://www.vox.com/2018/7/12/17564360/thai-cave-rescue-boys-mission-diver-ben-reymenants Comments

0 notes

linhbook2 · 6 years

Text

https://www.vox.com/2018/7/12/17564360/thai-cave-rescue-boys-mission-diver-ben-reymenants

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/7/5/17532464/thai-soccer-team-cave-rescue-diving-monsoon

beautiful happy ending story <3

0 notes

brunomindcast · 6 years

Link

0 notes

theconservativebrief · 6 years

Link

The story of the 12 Thai soccer players and their coach who had to be rescued from a flooded cave in northern Thailand by more than a dozen international divers and Thai Navy SEALs has enthralled the world for the past 10 days.

Though a mission to bring them out through the cave at first seemed impossible, rescuers eventually came up with a scheme that involved fitting the boys with dive masks, and wrapping them on stretchers to transport them out of the cave safely.

“We are not sure if this is a miracle, a science, or what. All the thirteen Wild Boars are now out of the cave,” the Thai Navy SEALs said on their Facebook page on Tuesday after the mission was complete. The boys are currently in recovery at the Chiang Rai Prachanukroh hospital, where some are being treated for mild pneumonia.

The initial search mission to find the boys after they went missing on June 23 was almost called off because the flooded cave was so dangerous to navigate. But then the boys and their coach were found on July 2 some 2.5 miles from the cave’s mouth by a pair of British divers.

The larger search team consisted of Thai Navy SEALs and several international divers, including Ben Reymenants, 45, a Belgian who owns a diving company in Phuket, Thailand.

Reymenants’s search dives helped lay the groundwork for the rescue, and he was closely involved with the entire mission. Vox spoke to him about what it was like in the watery labyrinth with 13 lives at stake.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Radhika Viswanathan

When did you get called in to help look for the missing boys, and can you describe the first few days of the search?

Ben Reymenants

We saw on the news that the kids were missing, and then I saw that the British cave rescue group had already come to the site, so I’m like, “Okay, these guys are experienced, they’re in good hands.”

But they were helped by the Royal Thai Navy SEALs, who had less cave experience. So a friend of mine who deals with these guys says, “Hey, they’re going to need support. Can you please come over and advise these guys how to actually move through these caves and fix the lines?”

Of course, I didn’t think twice. Twelve boys with their whole lives in front of them. But then when I arrived, the British cave divers had just come out the cave and they were like, “This is madness.”

Radhika Viswanathan

Why?

Ben Reymenants

When I arrived, the entrance looked like the Colorado River, but with mud and with zero visibility, so it was really pulling hand over hand. There was this really strong outflow, and at the beginning we were advancing about maybe 100 meters a day in zero visibility, fighting the current. And then there are parts where you have to climb up quite steep, dragging all your tanks, so it was physical.

I turned around from one unsuccessful dive, and I took out my line and came back and I met the British who were on their way in. And then we decided, “We have to call it off, because it’s not going to happen. People will die, and we don’t even know if these kids are alive.”

We told the Navy commander. And he says, “Yes, but these are kids from Thailand. I can’t face the public and say ‘we’re calling it off.’”

So he said, “I’m going to send in my Navy SEALs and we’re going to try.”

Of course, 19-year-old SEALs … I could be their dad. So I’m like, “Okay, the least I can do is help them try.”

Then on the third day, the [visibility improved] and the current was less strong. The Navy Seals had come back unsuccessfully; they had swum in circles and couldn’t find the passage. The British cave divers had already said, “We’re going home.”

I managed to push 200 meters of line. And they said, “Let’s work in teams, laying line.” While one team was sleeping, the other continued, so round-the-clock. And we started advancing fast because the rain had stopped, the vis got better, the flow got less, and then we actually went really fast through the cave.

These were still dives of six to eight hours. Very, very tiring.

From left to right: Reymenants, Chiang Rai Gov. Narongsak Osotthanakorn, and Maksym Polejaka (another diver on the mission) photographed on July 2. Ben Reymenants via Facebook

Radhika Viswanathan

So how was it actually finding them?

Ben Reymenants

The difficult part was to find this T-junction [a narrow part of the cave with a very sharp turn, beyond which was the tunnel that eventually led to the boys]. We got stuck a few time, there were restrictions, we freaked out.

And then [our team] found the T-junction, laid another 400 meters of line in the right direction, and then I think we stopped literally not even half a kilometer from the room where we thought they were, and we ran out of line,

So we had to turn around. It was very frustrating.

When we came out, the British cave divers were just coming in, and we were like, “Oh guys you probably can find them. We think it’s just another 400 to 800 meters.” And so they went in right after us, and three hours later, they surfaced in the room where the kids were. You’ve probably seen the footage.

I couldn’t believe it. Especially that there were all 13, alive and nobody injured, and their mental status as well, they were all like, “Hey, oh, we’re so happy, What day is it?” Remarkable.

Radhika Viswanathan

So how did the decision-making process go for the rescue?

Ben Reymenants

Obviously the whole world … had solutions; you have no idea the messages that I got. I pushed away a phone call, and they kept calling me and they said, “It’s the offices of Elon Musk,” and I said, “Right, is Barack Obama gonna call me next?”

But they said, “No, check your email, it’s actually us,” and it was (someone)@spaceX and I said, “Oh shit, I’m so sorry.” And they said, “We have all these solutions.”

So they were actually trying at four different levels: they were trying drilling, they were trying sonar in the forest to find alternative entrances, they were making a capsule to get them out.

One of the [rescue team’s] options was actually to teach them how to dive. But this is already pretty hard for experienced cave divers. See, the risk is if the boys panic and they pull off the mask, they drown. It’s a mile in; there’s no chance for survival.

And they were so skinny and so weak, there was no way they could have walked over all of this. So we decided to put them on a stretcher, with a full face mask, with pure oxygen on a positive pressure.

And it was quite chilly, so although they were put in wetsuits, their metabolism was so low that they were half-asleep, half-unconscious when they were brought out. So they were put immediately in quarantine and medical care. [Some reports have also claimed that the kids were sedated for the journey.]

And they’re all in good health and it’s amazing. And what I heard was that the coach did long meditation sessions [before leaving the cave] so they could calm down.

Radhika Viswanathan

How did the divers maneuver the stretchers through the narrowest parts of the cave?

Ben Reymenants

The smallest space was actually 2 feet wide, so yes, it was quite high, 60 centimeters high. And these kids are quite skinny and strapped to a stretcher.

The kids had to be literally pulled and dragged through that part. That’s also why they decided to strap them in and cover their face with a full face mask, so just in case they would panic or whatever. It’s not easy.

I stayed outside of the cave [during the rescue], since I needed to heal my hands and back. But friends of mine, the cave divers, they basically literally pulled and dragged the stretchers and handed them over [to one another]. So 24 divers were actually in the cave, and the stretchers were pulled out one-by-one and handed over to the next group, and the next group.

It was still a good two hours per kid.

Radhika Viswanathan

How did it end up being so much shorter than the initial dives?

Ben Reymenants

By now, we knew the cave. In the beginning, we were literally looking and searching and fighting current. But now, with all the teams, by the time one team carried the stretcher about 100 meters, they got tired and could hand it over to the next team. So that’s why. It was very efficient.

Also from Camp 3, rock climbers had actually installed hooks in the roof and made a sort of cable zip line where you could attach the stretchers. It was initially installed there to haul more than 500 tanks into the cave. And the stretchers were clipped on there — they’re very light kids — and that made them come out very quickly.

But it was still only four kids a day.

Radhika Viswanathan

How long have you been cave diving? And what drew you to it?

Ben Reymenants

I’ve been diving unofficially for about 20 years, and I became a cave instructor roughly 10 years ago. Not even 10 percent of the submerged caves on the planet have been explored. So it’s really the last frontier for mankind because no machines or animals can go in there. Only humans that are trained can go to that extent, which makes it extra special.

Radhika Viswanathan

How often do these kinds of cave rescues happen and how does this one compare to others?

Ben Reymenants

Luckily these cave rescues happen rarely because a lot of countries have actually put policies in place that prevent non-trained cave divers from going inside caves.

This cave … is only visited when it’s the dry season; when it’s completely dry, people walk in there. It’s a very long cave—it’s about [5.5 miles] long.

When it’s flooded, nobody dives. There are no lines. Normally, dive caves have a full set of lines and arrows to point to the exit and safety markers in place, but this one had nothing. So it was really finding your way through with a pretty basic map.

Radhika Viswanathan

I’ve heard this will be turned into two movies.

Ben Reymenants

Oh, you have no idea how many requests. Discovery, National Geographic.

Original Source -> Dangerous currents and zero visibility: a diver on the Thai cave rescue mission

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

0 notes

toshtanner · 6 years

Link

via Twitter https://twitter.com/paultoshtanner

#IFTTT #Twitter

0 notes

party-hard-or-die · 6 years

Text

Thai Cave Rescue Will Be a Murky and Desperate Ordeal, Divers Say

THAM LUANG CAVE, Thailand — Just reaching 12 boys and their soccer coach trapped in a cave in northern Thailand required a six-hour underground journey that is grueling and treacherous even for the most experienced cave divers: swimming in pitch blackness and vicious currents, squeezing through two-foot-wide passages and climbing over boulders several stories high.

One veteran diver, a former Thai Navy SEAL, lost consciousness and died early Friday after placing spare tanks along the route. Meanwhile, oxygen is starting to run low in the remote cavern where the children have taken refuge.

Three of those in the cavern are reported by the authorities to be weakening, and despite a round-the-clock pumping operation, the threat remains that monsoon rains could push water levels in their precarious refuge even higher.

The initial euphoria in Thailand and around the world that all 13 people had been found alive has given way four days later to deep anxiety over the challenge of getting them out. The option of waiting months until seasonal floodwaters recede now seems less promising, but the practical problems of ferrying 12 children and one adult safely through a nearly three-mile maze of perils remain daunting, all the more so since none of the children are said to be able to swim, much less use diving gear.

“When we found the boys, we thought that the boys would be able to survive in there for a long time,” the Thai Navy SEAL commander, Rear Adm. Arpakorn Yookongkaew, told reporters on Friday. “But now, things have changed. We have limited time. We have to work hard.”

The oxygen level in the boys’ cavern is about 15 percent and decreasing, he said, which is cause for concern: Below 16 percent can cause hypoxia, which in extreme cases can be fatal.

So the rescue effort has grown more urgent. On Thursday evening, rescuers began running a hose toward the cavern in hopes of pumping in more air, in addition to carrying in air tanks for future use, as the diver who perished, Saman Gunan, 38, had been doing.

Divers are also working to run a communications line to the cavern so that officials can better coordinate the rescue attempt and allow the boys some contact with their families. As it stands now, messages must be sent in and out with divers, who risk an arduous 12-hour round-trip journey from cave mouth to the cavern and back.

Interviews with the most experienced of the 140 or so cave divers from Thailand and around the world who are here to help have centered on a stark fact: This was already one of the most difficult cave-diving challenges in the world, and now they must somehow keep the weakened boys reasonably healthy in oxygen-depleted air while trying to teach them to attempt an underwater escape. One cave diver called it the underground equivalent of climbing Mount Everest — but with no guides to make things easier.

[Get the latest updates on the rescue in The Times’s briefing.]

Ben Reymenants, a Belgian cave diver who operates a dive shop in Thailand, was part of the group that first found the boys on Monday, after more than a week of searching. He said the muddy current pushing against him on his initial dive felt as powerful as the Colorado River’s.

“You’re literally pulling yourself, hand over hand, in zero visibility,” Mr. Reymenants, 45, recalled in a telephone interview. “You can’t read your depth gauge, you can’t read the time, so you’re basically flying blind in a direction you don’t know.”

Mr. Reymenants said he and other experienced cave divers initially thought finding the group would be impossible under such terrible conditions.

But after it was clear that Thai Navy commanders would continue sending their SEAL members in, Mr. Reymenants said he had volunteered to dive a second time.

“Those kids were at the age that they could have been my son,” he said. “A Navy SEAL can’t just sit there while these kids die in the cave. They have to show some activity — and if you’re a Navy SEAL, yes, you’ll sacrifice yourself.”

More than 110 of the divers are Thai SEAL members, and they have set up a command center in a dry area of the cave known as Chamber Three, where crews are based around the clock. It is about a mile from there to the boys, but it is the hardest mile. Most of it is underwater with few air pockets.

“All is water and dark,” Admiral Arpakorn said. “There are many alleys, up and down. We can say this mission is very brutal.”

One American cave diver, an Air Force rescue specialist who is part of a team sent to help from Okinawa, Japan, said that bringing the boys out now would require shepherding them through underwater passageways as much as a quarter-mile long without air pockets above.

The cave complex, which has never been fully mapped, has many different formations, said the American, who could not be identified by name for security reasons.

It is not a single river running through the cave, he said, and not all of the waterways appear to be directly connected. Pumping water from spots near the cave entrance does not necessarily reduce the level in more distant parts of the network, like where the boys and their coach are.

Underwater, everything is 10 times as difficult as it would be above ground: communicating, solving complex technical problems, providing emergency care, just moving around, he said.

The terrain varies from one area to the next — from sandy bottom to deep mud to boulders the size of a house. In one place, waters converge to create occasional geysers.

Currents can flow quickly, especially when it has been raining outside and the water level in the cave rises.

In some places, he said, one can see waterlines high on the walls of the cave — much higher than today’s levels — showing how high the water has risen in the past.

Some passages are excruciatingly narrow — as small as 2 feet by 2½ feet, Mr. Reymenants said. But the circumstances compelled him to explore the cave in a way that was risky even for a professional who had dived in dangerous spots across the globe, he said.

“Normally, I’d just turn around,” he said, “but then normally I don’t have 12 boys, and their entire lives, as an endpoint.”

Even as the divers and rescue officials navigate the challenges of that environment, concern over the depleting oxygen in the boys’ cavern has become a main concern, Thai officials said.

The governor of Chiang Rai Province, Narongsak Osottanakorn, who is overseeing the search-and-rescue operation, said Thursday night that three people in the cave were getting weaker, although they remained in reasonably good condition.

One of the three is believed to be the coach, Ekkapol Chantawong, who is said to have given his share of the meager food supply to the boys during their 10-day ordeal before they were found.

Reduced oxygen can also cause serious problems. Dinko Novosel, the president of the European Cave Rescue Association, said in a telephone interview that with an oxygen concentration of 15 percent or less in a cave — roughly where it is now — “You can survive, but you cannot walk around or do anything. It’s like being in the high mountains.”

Early Saturday, Mr. Narongsak said officials had decided not to try moving the group out of the cave yet because the boys were not ready for the challenging undertaking.

Admiral Arpakorn said divers would continue the work that Mr. Saman had been doing, bringing in air tanks and placing them at designated points along the route to the group’s cavern.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun, who has closely monitored the rescue operation, directed that Mr. Saman receive a royal-sponsored funeral and that his family be taken care of.

A video clip shared widely on Twitter showed Mr. Saman wearing sunglasses as he stood near the steps of an airplane.

“We will bring the kids home,” he said.

Richard C. Paddock and Muktita Suhartono reported from Tham Luang Cave, and Mike Ives from Hong Kong.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Divers Describe Dangers in a Thai Cave Rescue. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

The post Thai Cave Rescue Will Be a Murky and Desperate Ordeal, Divers Say appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2zgFYMu via Breaking News

#News Headlines #News Update #Sports Update #Business Update #World The News

0 notes

dragnews · 6 years