Hero Thai Navy SEAL Who Took Part in Cave Rescue Dies After Year-Long Infection
A Thai Navy SEAL who helped in the 2018 rescue of a boys soccer team who became trapped in a flooded cave has died from a blood infection he contracted during the operation, the Royal Thai Navy announced on Friday.
According to Reuters, Petty Officer Beiret Bureerak had been receiving treatment for a blood infection since helping to rescue 12 members of the Wild Boars soccer team and their 25-year-old coach last summer. But after experiencing setbacks, Bureerak passed away from the infection this week.
He is now the second person to die from complications related to the rescue operation.
Petty Officer 1st Class Saman Kunam, another Thai Navy SEAL diver, died in an attempt to supply one of the chambers with oxygen tanks.
“This mission is really scary and dangerous,” Chiang Rai’s Deputy Governor Passakorn Boonyaluck said at the time, as reported by the Washington Post.
“It was sad news, a former Seal who volunteered to help died last night about 2 a.m.,” he added of Kunam, according to Channel News Asia. “His job was to deliver oxygen (in the cave). He did not have enough on his way back.”
Nineteen divers spent more than two weeks attempting to rescue the team, made up of boys aged 11 to 16, who became stuck while exploring the Tham Luang Nang Non cave complex in northern Thailand. Heavy rains and rising floodwaters blocked the team’s path back out.
The cave is located in a remote and mountainous part of Chiang Rai province near the Laos and Myanmar borders. The cave itself is nearly six miles long, according to the AFP, and is one of the toughest and longest caves in Thailand — even for divers with deep experience, PEOPLE previously reported.
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A search for them was launched after a park officer saw the boys’ backpacks, bicycles and soccer cleats abandoned outside the cave. The structure was off-limits at the time. Police believed the team had to crawl into the cave through a narrow 15-meter long channel.
They were eventually discovered by officials on July 2. They had no food and limited oxygen in the chamber they were in, located about one and a half miles from the cave’s entrance.
In addition to the rushing waters, which rose high enough to block entrances to various chambers, rescue efforts had been hindered by the darkness of the caves and the low-level of oxygen throughout.
The operation to rescue the boys and their coach came to a close on July 10.
