An expert cave diver based in Co Clare who helped in the heroic rescue of 12 Thai boys and their football coach has described the conditions and visibility inside the cave, saying “it couldn’t get any worse”.
Jim Warny, who is originally from Belgium but lives in Ennis, returned from the rescue mission on Friday to a hero’s welcome.
Mr Warny, who has been cave diving for 20 years, has opened up about the length of time it took to reach the boys inside the cave through flooded sections from five metres to 350 metres long.
In his first in-depth interview, which airs on RTE Radio 1 on Tuesday, the father of one described the intricate rescue mission that gripped the world.
After he was asked by the British Cave Rescue Council to help the Thai navy Seal divers, Mr Warny was on a plane within a few hours.
Speaking to presenter Philip Boucher Hayes, he said: “It was always in the back of my head that I would get the call – I happened to see that one of the guys out there was active on Facebook and I text saying, ‘I’m here if you need me’ and he replied instantly saying, ‘How quick can you be’?
“I said two hours, and then five minutes later I was packing my bags to go and flew out the following morning.”
After arriving at the Tham Luang caves, Mr Warny saw first-hand how difficult and complex the conditions were.
“Visibility couldn’t get any worse, it was zero visibility,” he said.
“I wasn’t out of my comfort zone, it was more the psychological part of being responsible for a human life.
“The initial part where most of the military personnel and non-diving were based was about a kilometre in, mostly walking, wading and one short section that was initially flooded that they had pumped out.
“You would have to wade through, just enough to keep your head above the water.
“Then the cave diving starts and it’s varied between fully flooded sections – the shortest part was five metres long and the longest was 350 metres long.
“It was a mix of flooded sections and sections where you would swim on the surface.
“There was one section where we had to get completely out of the water and put the boys on a stretcher and try to carry them for 200 metres.”
With little time to prepare the young boys, a number of the divers carried out tests with schoolchildren in a local pool to determine which mask to use.
One of the biggest issues facing the divers and the boys was managing their stress, as “you can’t panic under water”.
He continued: “So we came to the conclusion there had to be some level of sedation.
“They were close to being fully sedated – if anything went wrong it would have jeopardised the survival of the boys.”
Towards the end of the rescue mission, Mr Warny was asked by a lead diver to assist and he helped bring one of the boys out of the cave.
“It was a miracle everything worked, there were difficulties, yes, but there was an amazing team involved,” he added.
As they edged close to the end of the mission, water started to rise inside the cave at an “incredible rate”.
Ten people were still inside the part of the cave that had a gap large enough to keep your head above water.
“That gap was closing quickly,” Mr Warny added.
The experienced team, however, made it out safely.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here