When authorities in Thailand were assembling a group of rescuers to search for a soccer team lost in a flooded cave, one of their first calls went to a retired firefighter and an IT consultant in England.
Rick Stanton and John Volanthen were the first to reach the 12 boys and their coach inside the Luang Nang Non Cave in Chiang Rai province on Monday.
It is their voices that can be heard talking to the boys and giving them calm reassurance in a dramatic video released by the Thai navy. They are working with Thai navy SEALs, who are leading the rescue operation.
Stanton, the retired firefighter from Coventry, and Volanthen, who does IT consulting work in Bristol, have years of experience in cave rescues and have helped map the Luang Nang Non Cave.
“Brits are probably one of the best cave-diving teams,” said Dinko Novosel, head of the European Cave Rescue Commission, even before the search mission proved successful.
Chris Jewell, a member of the British Cave Rescue Council, confirmed that the divers on the video were Stanton and Volanthen.
It’s not the first time they have lent their expertise to an international rescue effort.
Stanton, who was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire, or MBE, in 2012, previously described his most memorable lifesaving effort as the 2004 rescue of six soldiers trapped by rising floodwaters in Mexico.
“They were trapped for nine days, and we had to teach a few of them to dive through a considerable length of passage to get them out,” Stanton told the Coventry Telegraph newspaper in 2012. “It took about nine hours to get them all…
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