Friday 13 July 2018

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From yesterday's Metro, on the topic of the Thai cave rescue:

Perhaps attention will now turn to how the boys got there in the first place.

Derek Gomer, Pontypridd

5 comments:

formertory said...

Errr........ through the cave entrance? I doubt they teleported. Or is he angling for a bit of bansturbation and the closing off of the cave system, as it probably would be in this country?

While we're at it, people need rescuing off Ben Nevis as well from time to time. Ban hill walking! And as for people who go sailing........ words fail me.

Mark Wadsworth said...

I thought no he means, why did the coach lead them in to such an inherently dangerous situation.

Going up Ben Nevis is not inherently dangerous, it just sometimes goes wrong.

Mark Wadsworth said...

If somebody untrained and unqualified offered to take your kids into a cave system like that, would you be happy to let them go?

formertory said...

No, of course not, so I take your point.

The problem seems to me to have arisen not because they went into an easily-accessible part of an open system (where they'd been before), but by being caught out by heavy rains and forced deep into the cave as water rose. They're certainly not the first people in a cave who've been imperilled by rain, and are unlikely to be the last.

So really, Derek Gomer's point is just a statement of the bleedin' obvious, and adds nothing to the issue. His question should be not how they got there - we already know that - but things like was the weather forecast checked before entering? Did they leave notifications with anyone? A time of return? Appropriate equipment?

You know - all the things people are supposed to do before they're caught out on Ben Nevis and need rescuing.........

Mark Wadsworth said...

FT, it is clear he meant "why" rather than literally "how" (through the front entrance).