.
Now that it's over, so to speak, maybe one thread on CI to refer to later would be nice?
.
For the past 2 weeks hundreds of rescue workers from all over the world have been helping to save the 13 trapped in a cave.
.
What they were doing in there is a story to itself. Let's say it was some kind of mistake.
.
The volunteers who originally found the lost team were cave diver experts from England.
England is a few thousand miles away from Thailand. These guys came a long way to risk their lives.
.
British cave diver Robert Charles Harper explores an opening on June 29.
.
The locals were having quite a lot of difficulty finding the boys, and hope was beginning to wear thin when the British expert cave divers arrived and found their way into newly remote passages the others had not yet tried. The diving conditions were extremely hazardous, with total darkness and water currents with debris in murky waters with zero visibility. How these guys were able to get anywhere is going to be the subject of some amount in the future.
.
One of the plan options for getting the boys out was to teach them how to use SCUBA to swim underwater, but some of the boys couldn't swim. So a plan for how to teach them scuba in such extremely challenging conditions involved taking 4 months to train the boys. Needless to say, that wasn't a good idea. Monsoon rains were coming in which case the cave would be even more flooded with water. The degree of danger is made known by the fact that one volunteer, a retired Navy Seal from Thailand, died while returning from making air tank delivery when he ran out of air while underwater. Saman Kunan gave his life to deliver life-saving air to those he was trying to save, and lost his own life when he ran out of air.
.
This is in a part of the world where Budhism is the principal religion.
.
SourceFamily members pray in front of a Buddhist statue near the cave on July 8
.
Here is a photo from CNN showing 4 women "praying" at a Buddhist shrine.
Perhaps someone can explain the dark-skinned figure holding a gold 3-pronged stick in one hand and a skull on a stick in the other.
The 4 women are doing something, but I'm not quite sure "praying" is an accurate description.
There are bowls on a level surface in front of the women -- with what, incense or something else?
What posture is that, a squat? They're sitting on their heels as if during elimination.
They're not kneeling. Or am I misunderstanding something here?
Recall that in Buddhism they do not recognize any God, but some other sort of mysterious power.
It is a religion that seems closer to atheism than to any kind of theism.
No details, to explain what many of the photos have in them, are provided.
Just photos with a sound bite caption.
.
This undated photo, released via the Thailand Navy Seal Facebook page, shows rescuers with their
hands locked. The caption said, "We Thai and the international teams join forces to bring the young
Wild Boars home." The Wild Boars is the name of the soccer team the young boys play on.
.
What isn't explained is the meaning of the circular wood beads strung around two of the wrists, which are right hands, while the third wrist is a left hand, which has no bead bracelet. You can see also that there is a red cord tied next to the wooden beads which has smaller round beads strung on it. I've been told these are Buddhist items as well, but I'm not sure what they're for. Perhaps the left arm belongs to a foreigner who is not Buddhist?
.
The body of Saman Kunan, a former Thai Navy Seal, is carried during a repatriation and religious
rites ceremony on Friday, July 6. Kunan died Friday as he returned from an operation to deliver oxygen
tanks to the cave. He ran out of air while underwater, an official said.
.
I'm not sure why a Buddhist monk would be holding a roll of toilet paper at a time like this. Perhaps someone with more experience can explain that. The death of Mr. Kunan is the only casualty in the entire operation, which is tragic, but remarkable as well.
.
Monks attend a Buddhist prayer for the team on July 1.
.
Scuba tanks are delivered to the search site on July 1.
.
I haven't seen anywhere how many scuba tanks were involved, but in this one photo alone you can see about 170 (13 x 13 = 169).
It would seem smart to have a re-filling apparatus brought in, instead of so many tanks. Maybe they had both.
.
In a news broadcast, I heard about the one really large capacity water pump they brought in to the site, which they were relying on to keep water out of the cave while crews went back inside the cave to retrieve the equipment that had been left inside (which would include empty air tanks), that one water pump failed, and water started going back into the cave, so the crews had to leave. They may have abandoned some amount of equipment because it was too risky to go in to get that stuff out.