Editorial: Rain suggests rest of boys must be rescued without delay

Thai boys smile as Thai Navy SEAL medic help injured children inside a cave in Mae Sai, northern Thailand. Photo / AP

As countries in our part of the world, including Thailand, awoke yesterday to the news that four of the 12 boys had been rescued, millions of hearts leapt with relief. At last, divers had proved it could be done. Four brave boys with no underwater skills previously had been brought through flooded underground caverns and helped to squeeze through narrow passages in darkness, in a journey of more than 4km and several hours, to safety.

The relief for their waiting parents can be imagined. It would have been shared by the parents of the other eight young footballers and their coach still trapped far underground. At least all now knew it was possible to get through, a possibility that had seemed to diminish after the death last Thursday of an experienced diver who ran out of oxygen as he was delivering air tanks through the cave network.

With monsoon rain forecast this week and oxygen levels falling in the caves, the options were closing. The boys could not be left there with supplies to await the end of the monsoon in October. The decision had to be made to get them out immediately.

Considering the boys' weakened condition after two weeks without a meal, their natural fear at the prospect of plunging into dark, dirty water, wearing breathing apparatus and clutching a guide rope, and the high risk of panic underwater, the rescue was high risk.

It still is. The fact the rescue of the remaining eight boys and their coach was suspended yesterday while oxygen was pumped into their cavern suggests the risk is increasing with time. It was raining heavily in the area yesterday, a day earlier than predicted. Every hour that passed yesterday with no word of rescue work resuming sounded more ominous.

Some of the boys, aged 11-16, would have been in weaker condition than others, some would have been more frightened than others. For the rescue of the first four, the diver teams reportedly matched up two of the stronger boys with two of the weaker, which proved to be a success. So now all know they can come through in the same way so long as they do it soon.

Even so, there remains a high risk of a tragedy. If all 12 boys, the coach and the diving teams are safely out of the caves this morning it will be wonderful. But if at least one of them has succumbed as the former Navy Seal did last week, it would be no wonder, though it would cast a pall over the impressive rescue effort the world has watched with hope against foreboding.

The rescue operation has involved as many as 80 divers, at least 50 of them foreigners, including five Thai Navy Seals. The pumping equipment set up in the remote mountainous forest of northern Thailand managed to remove 190 million litres over a relatively dry spell last week. By Sunday, when the decision was taken to start bringing the boys out, the pumps had made some of the passages walkable. They may not be so after yesterday's rain.

The whole operation was expected to take several days. Every young life saved is cause for celebration, if they all can be saved, it will be a happy ending to a story that has had the world united in anxiety.