‘EVEN SOME OF THE TOUGHEST DIVERS ON THE PLANET WERE UNABLE TO FORD THE LENGTH OF THAT CAVE’
MY NAME is Dr Richard Harris – or just “Harry” to my mates. If you meet me at a party, that’s what I’ll be introduced as.
“This is Harry,” the host will probably say. And then, more likely than not – “you know, the doctor from the Thai cave rescue”. In June 2018, with the eyes of the world watching, I dived into a remote cave in northern Thailand in an attempt to rescue members of a Thai youth soccer team and their coach after they’d been trapped there by flash flooding.
I was part of a global rescue effort that involved thousands of people, including civilian volunteers, fearless soldiers, brilliant engineers and one opinionated billionaire [Elon Musk]. And by several weird twists of fate, a bunch of middleaged cave-diving enthusiasts. They were proponents of an obscure hobby that most of the world had never heard of, whose specific set of skills and highly specialised equipment proved key to the rescue.
Long story short, I used my experience as a recreational cave diver to traverse kilometres of the subterranean Tham Luang Nang Non cave system, and my professional knowledge as an anaesthetist to sedate the stranded boys so they could be dived and carried to safety.
To be honest, I didn’t think much of our chances. From the moment the idea was first put to me, I didn’t expect any of the children to survive. When I weighed the risks, tried to envision everything that could go wrong, I thought the chances of successfully sedating
