3 months in a cave versus drowning, or close to it.

[gfretwell]

[gfretwell]

I was just talking about over pressurizing the back end of the cave to blow the water out.

[gfretwell]

SCUBA is not even the right word. Hookah is the way to go but SCUBA divers think hookah guys are posers (they don't need PADI cards) and they won't even embrace the idea. At anything less than 30 feet I would not consider a SCUBA tank if I had a hookah hose.

[trader_4]

:

s and enlarged a passageway that had been too small to pass through while w earing an air tank.

ush on to where they suspected the group was, roughly three miles from the cave entrance.

m and dive the 2.5 miles to the mouth of the cave, with the help of divers who would guide them out.

re still too weak to make the whole journey. It currently takes the experie nced divers five hours to make that journey due to high currents, poor visi bility, and narrow, muddy paths.

That's another mystery. They said he was bringing air tanks in to stage. In which case you'd think he'd have extra tanks someplace where he could have gotten too. Maybe he had X left and figured it was enough to get back and it wasn't. It's sad, one life lost dims what was a very positive rescue so far. Looks to me like they have to go in the next 24 hours, rain is increasing and I don't think anybody knows if there is any safe space that water can't get to and where there is air to last 4 months.

[gfretwell]

God only knows if the B roll on the news is accurate but they showed a stack of industrial sized O2 bottles in the cave. He might not have had extra air. It was still dumb to dive an empty tank. I also still blame this on the prejudice of scuba divers against hookahs. If you have a hose connected to a very large to inexhaustible supply, stuff like this does not happen.

[trader_4]

ote:

not for the

hrough a small

ocks and enlarged a passageway that had been too small to pass through whil e wearing an air tank.

o push on to where they suspected the group was, roughly three miles from t he cave entrance.

swim and dive the 2.5 miles to the mouth of the cave, with the help of dive rs who would guide them out.

t are still too weak to make the whole journey. It currently takes the expe rienced divers five hours to make that journey due to high currents, poor v isibility, and narrow, muddy paths.

How are you going to run an air hose for ~1.5 miles?

[danny burstein]

Carry it in as "flattened", so to speak, 75 foot length with bayonet or even threaded ends. Think... fire hose.

Pull it out.

Pull the next one past it. Make the connection.

Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

[gfretwell]

No, It looks like more like 100 meters max. I have 50 meters on my hookah. They only have to go from dry spot to dry spot. It really only looks like 3 places that even require getting your head underwater. Assuming that picture is not fake news.

[trader_4]

Assuming you do that, now you have 1.5 miles of air hose connected to a compressor. No, it can't be a compressor, because that would have to be run outside the cave so it would be a 2.5 mile hose. If it' 1/2", would air even make it through that long of a hose in sufficient volume? And then the kid and a diver or more likely two divers, one in front, one behind the kid have to do what? Trail 500 ft of hose behind them as they move through passageways they can barely fit through? Doesn't sound practical to me.

[danny burstein]

Four or five inch hose for 2 miles. Plenty of air Even with the added resitance at the connectors.

[trader_4]

is not for the

] through a small

as very nerve

ed to bail and

ure that there

Unless they

t rocks and enlarged a passageway that had been too small to pass through w hile wearing an air tank.

e to push on to where they suspected the group was, roughly three miles fro m the cave entrance.

to swim and dive the 2.5 miles to the mouth of the cave, with the help of d ivers who would guide them out.

but are still too weak to make the whole journey. It currently takes the e xperienced divers five hours to make that journey due to high currents, poo r visibility, and narrow, muddy paths.

IDK how you come up with 100 M max, but even if it's that, what happens with 100 meters of hose dragging as you go through openings that are just about big enough for a man, with jagged edges, rocks, who knows what to get hung up on? I can see it for diving off a boat in open water, but I;m not seeing it here. And what's it like pulling

100M of hose behind you, as opposed to just having it mostly vertical when you're diving off a boat?

PArt of the problem is these kids are apparently still weak from having starved for over a week. IDK how fast you recover from that, but they better hurry up. I would think they better be hauling ass right now. Once they start it's still going to take a long time, they said 5 hours it's taking the divers now to make the trip. With the kids, it's probably what, 50% longer? As I said before, I hope it's not analysis paralysis going on, with too many cooks that can't make up their minds what to do. It's supposed to start raining today and continue to accelerate in the days ahead. I think the first day was like .1", but does anyone know how that translates into how fast the caves fill? Seems like somehow it changed drastically in little time before.

[trader_4]

And you're going to drag a four inch hose behind you as you swim out? We're talking about Hookah that Gfre proposed. Hello? And even if you want to just pump air into the cave, I think you're seriously underestimating the difficulty in moving 4 inch air hose over miles under water, inside narrow passages, etc.

[danny burstein]

You may have missed my earlier post that you pull it in fifty foot lengths and use quick connecter ends.

Again, think fire hoses.

[danny burstein]

So you (they) disconnect those sections for the two hours that a half dozen people would be passing through those bottlenecks.

[gfretwell]

Looking at the picture of the cave, if it is accurate, the longest stretch between dry spots seems to be about 100m. You stage a tank at the end of the hose and PULL the kids through, they are not pulling the hose, it is pulling them (along with a rope).

I would suit them up in a wet suit to avoid scrapes and cuts and attach a harness to pull them by.

[gfretwell]

A 200 pound guy with a tank on will have problems getting through a man hole cover. The only reason I could think of to run that big a hose would be if they thought they could blow the water out of the cave from the back. If you just need enough air to run 100m or so a 1/2" hose at 80-90 PSI (what a hookah regulator uses) will work fine down to 30' or so. That is what I use. Again I am not sure if the pictures are accurate but if so the longest underwater stretch seems to be less than 100m.

[trader_4]

And then with the hose disconnected, you die because you need air to breath when you're under water. Even a small regular diver hose, what happens when you have hundreds of feet of it dragging behind you as you go through narrow, rocky passages, going uphill, then downhill, left for 15 ft then right? Have you ever tried pulling 50 ft of 1/2" garden hose around the yard and seen how it gets caught, hung up easily just going around a corner of the house or a bush? And this is underwater, where it's murky, no visibility, fast currents. Even if you got 50 ft, 100 ft, 200 ft, then the hose snags on something, now what? Where is the snag? How do you undo it? You're screwed and that's without it even snagging so bad that it cuts off the flow.

[trader_4]

Given how easy it is for even 50 ft of hose to get caught when trying to pull it around the yard, caught on the corner of the house, caught on a bush, pulling several hundred of feet of it through rocky narrow passages that twist, turn, go up and down, doesn't seem very practical to me. What happens when while pulling it gets caught, kinked on a rock and the air flow stops? And I don't see the advantage to the long hose idea anyway. Divers are regularly travelling the full distance with scuba gear and tanks.

[gfretwell]

You folks are going to have to make up your mind. Is it too hard with tanks or not?

[trader_4]

I never said it was too hard with tanks. I would expect they'd have maybe two divers with a kid, with the kid using air from one of the divers so he doesnt need a tank.