How Divers Found 5 Men Trapped in Flooded Laos Cave for a Week

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A mission to rescue seven would-be gold miners who spent a week trapped in a flooded cave in Laos has so far resulted in five people being found alive.

"I’m still shaking," Laos’ Rescue Volunteer for People leader Bounkham Luanglath told the Associated Press May 27. "Our team made it happen." Videos shared by his team on social media showed them celebrating outside the cave when they got word of the good news.

Meanwhile, Luanglath said the search would continue, as two of the villagers who entered the cave in the central province of Xaisomboun on May 19 remain missing.

Divers first set out on May 20, but heavy rain and hazardous terrain turned the rescue operation into a multi-day operation. As seen in a video posted by Rescue Volunteer for People, after swimming through muddy cave passages, the team emerged to discover five men, some wearing working headlamps, sitting on a rock surrounded by floodwater.

The organization said in a Facebook post that the men were "all safe."

Who are the men found in a flooded cave in Laos?

The five rescued men and two men still missing have not yet been identified. But Luanglath explained to the AP earlier this week that the narrow-mouthed cave was a known spot for gold seekers in the area, where there are commercial gold and copper-mining operations.

Aspiring miners looking to try their luck were warned of the safety hazards. Rescuers said, according to BBC News, that there are cave passages that measure as short as 20 inches wide.

All seven are said to be from a village in Xaisomboun province, in central Laos.

Who found the missing villagers in the flooded Laos cave?

Thai and Laotian rescue teams—including several dive specialists who took part in the dramatic 2018 rescue of 12 youth soccer players and their coach from the flooded Tham Luang Nang Non cave in Thailand—joined forces to search for the missing miners.

How did divers find the trapped men in the Laos cave?

To even get to the cave entrances requires a 2.5-mile hike. Divers first accessed the cave on May 20, the day after the men were stranded, but heavy rains triggered a landslide and prevented them from going any further, according to state-run Lao Phattana News, per Reuters. They set about clearing sand and gravel in their way and pumping out water, with Metta Tham Rescue leader Kengkard Bongkawong of Thailand writing on social media May 24, "From this moment on, I believe our success is not far away...We estimate that less than 20 metres remain before we reach the key target area."

Videos shared by the rescuers online showed men toting flashlights as they crawled through the mud and waded into chest high water.

"All day, all night," Bongkawong wrote May 24, "water was still being pumped out."

Finnish diver Mikko Paasi, who's based in Thailand and was involved in the 2018 rescue, said May 27, per BBC News, that rescuers needed to "navigate hundreds of meters of constant restrictions, flood waters, collapse hazards and high risk of contaminated air quality" once they were in the cave.

Hours later, five villagers were found alive.

“What a feeling!!!” Paasi wrote on Instagram afterward. “The task so far has been far from easy and everybody involved has done amazing work.”

How will rescuers get the stranded villagers out of the flooded cave in Laos?

"The task so far has been far from easy and everybody involved has done amazing work," Paasi wrote. "Thank you all teams involved...This is only a brief relief as the 5 survivors are still in the terminal chamber, all healthy and in good spirits, but the extraction is still ahead and it ain’t going to be easy."

"For me and @benzscout, we need to dive straight back and bring the miners more supplies to gain strenght [sic] and get ready for the way out."

Paasi told CBS News that he and his diving partner would continue to search for the two men who are still missing. The No. 1 priority for the known survivors, he said, was getting food and water to them inside the cave before they can be safely extracted.

Ideally, he explained, they would pump enough water from the cave so that everyone could just walk out, but even then it won't be easy due to the rocky terrain and narrow passageways.