Four miners crawled out of a flooded cave in Laos's Xaisomboun province on their own power Saturday, bringing the total number of survivors to five while rescuers continue searching for two others still unaccounted for.
The miners were part of a group of villagers who entered the cave on May 19 to look for gold. Heavy rains triggered flash flooding that blocked the exit and trapped the group inside. Divers from multiple countries flew in to help with the rescue.
According to ABC News, Australian cave diver Josh Richards was on site when the four men emerged. "I was literally about to head into the cave myself when all of a sudden we heard all these cheers and spun around, and four very muddy miners just suddenly emerged out of the out of the cave on their own," Richards said.
The four squeezed and swam through the tunnels after rescue teams installed drills and water pumps to drain the floodwater enough to make passage possible. Richards said the men held their heads to the ceiling to breathe as they navigated jagged, narrow crevices in pitch-black conditions. They came out dehydrated and exhausted but alive and were treated at the cave entrance.
The first survivor, rescued Friday, had been taught to scuba dive in order to reach the cave mouth. That man was taken to a hospital and is still undergoing medical examination, officials said.
The cave itself presented extraordinary challenges. It is a highly fractured network of tunnels, and the trapped men were located more than 800 feet from the entrance, down a steep 45-degree underground slope. Officials said the passages were so tight that rescuers specifically needed thin divers to navigate them.
The evacuation operation paused Friday night before resuming Saturday. Divers and rescue crews were still working to locate the two remaining missing individuals as of Saturday. The water level inside the cave had dropped significantly, but officials said the logistics remained complicated.
