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.
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 out."
Alex Daw, a West Midlands Fire Service watch commander who supervised Stanton for six years, said his experience as a firefighter serves him well. Besides that, Stanton also is known as an tinkerer - a technician always making sure his equipment will help him go "farther, further under water, in the dark".
"If the kids have got someone there like him, they're safe," Daw said without hesitation. "He's cool, calm and collected."
Volanthen was Stanton's partner on the French rescue attempt.
Volanthen told the Sunday Times in 2013 that cave diving is not the pursuit of those who crave thrills.
"The flight response now isn't always appropriate," he said. "Panic and adrenaline are great in certain situations, but not in cave-diving. The last thing you want is any adrenaline whatsoever."
Both men are members of the South and Mid Wales Cave Rescue team. A third Briton, Robert Harper, is working with them in Thailand after Thai authorities contacted the British Cave Rescue Council for help when the boys disappeared on June 23.
The British divers left London on June 26 with special rescue equipment, including radios designed to work in caves.
Share
