After Days Trapped in a Flooded Laotian Cave, Five Men Walk Out on Their Own, Stunning Rescuers
VIENTIANE, Laos — After more than a week trapped inside a flooded cave in a remote region of central Laos, five men did what few thought possible: they walked out on their own.
It was not what the international rescue team had planned. When the first of the five was guided out through submerged tunnels late Friday, the operation paused, with rescuers bracing for a painstaking, multi-day extraction. Instead, around midday Saturday, the remaining four emerged from the cave entrance just as a team of divers, wetsuits donned, was preparing to go in.
“I was literally putting my wetsuit on to head in when they came out,” said Australian rescue diver Josh Richards, a member of the expert dive team that had spent days readying the men for a dangerous underwater escape.
The group — all local villagers who had entered the cave more than a week ago in search of gold — were trapped by rapidly rising rainwater. For their families, the sudden freedom brought overwhelming relief. Several wept as the men, covered in mud and suffering from skin and intestinal ailments but otherwise alive, were wrapped in thermal blankets and lifted onto stretchers.
Thao Oun, a local volunteer involved in the rescue, had been searching for his own father. When the older man emerged, Oun dropped to his knees and embraced him, tears streaming down his face — a release of more than a week of agonizing uncertainty.
The rescue had unfolded under a dark cloud of uncertainty. A separate group of two other villagers, believed to have entered the cave system earlier, remains missing. Rescue teams are weighing whether to resume the search as forecasts warn of approaching torrential rain that could once again flood the cave, making further dives impossible.
The diving team — which included veterans of the dramatic 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue in neighboring Thailand — had spent days teaching the men how to use breathing apparatus and oxygen tanks in the cramped, pitch-black chambers that resembled “a narrow, flooded coffee,” according to Richards. In some sections, the passages narrowed to just 60 centimeters (about two feet), clogged with opaque, silty water. None of the trapped villagers had any prior diving experience, making the prospect of an underwater exit a daunting gamble.
But a series of pumps running continuously Friday night succeeded in lowering the water levels significantly inside the cave, just ahead of a forecast storm that could have halted the operation entirely. Finnish diver Mikko Paasi, a veteran of the 2018 Thai rescue, said the team had joked that if the pumps worked well enough, the divers might not be needed. “That’s exactly what happened,” he said. “It was the best outcome because pumping was always the safest way — nobody has to take a risk.”
The men had ventured underground as part of an informal, unregulated gold rush that has expanded across rural Laos in recent years, particularly in remote limestone and river basin regions where formal employment is scarce. According to the Washington-based Stimson Center, hundreds of suspected alluvial mining sites in the Mekong basin operate entirely outside official oversight. The dangers are well-documented: in 2021, seven people were killed in a shaft collapse during an illegal gold-digging operation in Xieng Khouang province.
Human rights groups and NGOs have long warned that economic desperation in rural communities — where few alternatives exist beyond subsistence agriculture — drives extraction workers to take life-threatening risks. The recent surge in global gold prices has only intensified that drive, luring more prospectors deeper into unenforced caves and pits even during the treacherous rainy season.
Laos state media covering the incident have heavily emphasized official warnings against illegal mining, highlighting environmental and safety hazards. While the rescued men are being hailed as survivors of a miracle, their triumph may soon be overshadowed as authorities look to crack down on the expanding illicit gold trade. For now, however, such anxieties are on hold — the five men have been given a second chance at life.
CNN’s June Jeong and Angie Puranasamriddhi contributed reporting.