outside the hospital where the four boys are now being treated. let s go first to jonathan miller. this was an extraordinary rescue. there s still a long way to go. so how do they pull this off? reporter: joe, they had about 90 rescue workers in total down in that incredibly labyrinth and cavern system. only 13 of them were involved with the actual rescue of pulling the boys out. they were the trained cave divers. each boy, each of the four boys who have come out had a diver, one ahead of them and one behind. the boy in the middle held on to a rope tethered to the front diver, who also held his compressed air tank. the diver on the back would also have been holding a guideline, the dive line, and they navigated through several passageways of submerged tunnel before scrambling out into the upper chambers of the cave.
i want to talk about that experience in a moment again, but, first, any sort of medical issues the boys could be facing? i know doctors have been trying to assess them as they go on, but are we talking hypothermia here? we already know about the lack of objection again and some of them are sick from that. some of the medical issues are out of the sight of my knowledge. i do know one of the things we study in cave rescue, especially in the northeast united states where i am, is hypothermia and you have to remember that a body s temperature is 98.6 normal. and that the water, even in a warm thy cave, may be only 70 degrees. so we are talking about 30 degrees below body temperature. you can cool off pretty quickly. if you re not healthy, you can cool off even faster, so hypothermia will be one of their major concerns. emily, you keep talking about experienced cave divers and we
know that who are rescuing the boys are experienced. you, yourself, 90 hours in that cave but you were an experienced cave diver. you knew how to sort of go through these small areas. you said it wasn t frightening for you to go through these narrow passages. these are just little boys. they are ages 11 to 16. they are not experienced in any of this and their coach is 25. they are not cave divers. they are soccer players. well, i m not a cave diver. i m an experienced indicativcav there was no water in my cave. what you have to look at with the boys these divers will instill confidence in them. their expertise will help and one of the things that you work on in a cave rescue situation is the psychology of your patients. and they will be looking at that every moment to try and have the kids thinking about getting home to their parents, that they need
what can you tell us about that? because it s not your typical cave dive, by any estimation. it s more like what we call in the united states, spelunking or cave exploration and then some cave diving. it is. it s exactly that. if you like, the divers are the cave divers, yes, they are cavers or spelunkers. and they also go under water in the caves, which not many cavers do. you know, as a proportion of the people who go caving, i would think a guess, but no more than 5% also go cave diving. and these are and these represent the pinnacle of the experienced. so, you know, they are amongst a very small number indeed. yes. certainly requires more than one skill set to get those kids out
useful and relevant skills that some of these cave divers take over to thailand because of the turbulent water, lots of sediment, poor visibility. it s the techniques to safely negotiate those kinds of channels that they re really able to bring to the party and help in terms of assisting the thai authorities with this cave rescue. absolutely. having done just a bit of cave diving myself, i can tell you it s a little scary sometimes. thanks so much for that, peter dennis. more on our breaking news. we ll show you what it s like inside the cave and the hurdles rescue teams are encountering. and it s now or never. rescuers facing another challenge, including from an incoming storm. what this means for the rescue of the rest of the kids and their coach, coming up. time for whitestrips. crest glamorous white whitestrips are the only ada-accepted whitening strips proven to be safe and effective. and they whiten 25x better than a leading whitening toothpaste. crest. healthy, beautiful smile