One miner was rescued on Friday as four others remained trapped in a cave in Laos that they had entered more than a week ago in search of gold, a leader of the rescue team said, as a search continued for two more miners who were missing.
The seven miners became trapped in the cave more than a week ago when gravel and dirt blocked their exit after heavy rains.
Rescuers were in a race to free them before they ran out of air, or before another storm rolled in and flooded the cave.
The miners entered the cave with a plan to stay inside for a few days. They had brought food and water, which sustained them while a rescue plan was being devised. The rescue team included divers from Thailand and Finland who had been involved in the 2018 rescue of a youth football team.
Small-scale mining is a critical source of income for people in Xaysomboun, a mountainous province that has significant gold, copper and silver deposits. One of the largest mine operators in the province is PanAust, an Australian mining company that was acquired by a subsidiary of Guangdong Rising Holdings Group, a Chinese state-owned company.
Because mining companies pay only the minimum wage of around $113 a month, rural villagers risk entering informal mines in search of gold to sell at a higher price to smaller Chinese operators, said Oliver Tappe, a professor of anthropology at the University of Cologne in Germany who has studied local mining practices in Laos.
“It is quite volatile and depends on sheer luck, but if everything goes well, they can earn more than the minimum wage,” he said.
Informal miners are frequently trapped in flooded caves during Laos’s rainy season, Professor Tappe added, because wet soil is easier to pump from underground and pan for minerals.
Crews continuously pumped water that had flooded the cave entrance until it receded enough for the rescuers to wriggle in a single file through a long, narrow tunnel, which had barely enough space for rescuers to breathe or store oxygen tanks. Kengkard Bongkawong, a rescue diver from Thailand who confirmed the rescue of the first miner on Friday night, likened it to crawling through a drinking straw.
On Wednesday, rescuers found five men crouched in a chamber about 984 feet from the cave’s entrance. In a video posted by rescuers on social media, the men said they were hungry, but not injured or ill.
Mikko Passi, a Finnish rescue diver who joined the search, said on Wednesday that it would be difficult to extract the miners because they were too weak to immediately make the journey through the tunnel.
Christine Hauser contributed reporting.
Francesca Regalado is a Times reporter covering breaking news.
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