Each time there’s a new rescue, a new mission and new acts of heroism, Major Michael O’Hagan, the public affairs officer for the 106th Rescue Wing based at Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton, says, “I think most everyone in our community has no idea people from their own backyard were critically involved in this rescue.”
Most recently, he said it in relation to the astounding cave rescue that was highlighted in the Ron Howard film “Thirteen Lives.” Two airmen from the 106th Rescue Wing — Technical Sergeant Jamie Brisbin and the wing’s medical commander, Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Rush — were both integral members of the team assembled to recover a boys’ soccer team and their coach stranded in the Tham Luang Cave in the Chiang Rai Province in northern Thailand after early monsoon rains trapped them during the summer of 2018. The entire team and their coach survived, miraculously.
“Doc” Rush was called upon to offer his medical expertise, while Brisbin was part of a multinational scuba team that swam through murky, fast-moving water to extricate the team of 12 boys, ages 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old coach. The victims were trapped for 18 days, some 2.5 miles into the depths of Tham Luang Cave, as it filled with water.
The boys went into the cave on June 23.
On active duty with the Air Force 31st Rescue Squadron in Okinawa, Japan, Brisbin was on leave when he was called. The 36-year-old began diving as a teen living on Long Island. He continued the specialized activity as an airman and pararescueman in the Air Force.
“One of the reasons I got involved was because I’d done a significant amount of cave diving before,” Brisbin related, speaking via Zoom teleconference from a location overseas. He was in line to check in for a flight back to Okinawa on June 27, when his commander told him to board the first plane back.
A car met him on the tarmac. All his gear had been packed. “They basically threw me in the back of this C-130 that had been waiting for me to show up,” he recalled. The aircraft was packed with about 60 people — special tactics officers, pararescuemen, medical and support personnel, plus a translator.
“We landed in the middle of the night. It was pitch black and pouring rain,” Brisbin remembered.
Though the rescuers were told to get some sleep while all the equipment was being unloaded, Brisbin and several from the plane wanted to go directly to the cave to get a sense of what the situation was and to speak with Thai officials in an effort to determine how they could help.
“After talking with them, we went into the cave,” Brisbin continued. He described Tham Luang Cave as reminiscent of a large subway station with flowing water.
The group asked to go into the cave as far as they could without diving. They got a few hundred meters and found large sumps that could only be swum across.
They walked only about two minutes as the water rose rapidly. People outside the cave began yelling to them to get out before they became trapped, too. “This was definitely a wake-up call that this was a dangerous mission,” he said.
When the Americans arrived, the children hadn’t been located yet. It was June 28. They were found, some 2.5 miles into the depths, on July 2.
“It was a pretty busy time,” Brisbin recounted. “We were on the ground for about a month.”
Describing the danger of cave diving, he underscored: “It’s a completely alien and hostile environment. Even if you’re in a spring in Florida with crystal clear water and very little current, you still have to use very specialized equipment and special training.”
One of the concerns is getting lost. “In the cave, the water was cold. You could put your hand up to your mask and you couldn’t see anything, and the water was moving, definitely faster than you could swim against. You had to pull yourself through it,” Brisbin explained.
As rescuers strategized, he noted, there were hundreds of people combing the woods trying to find alternate entrances to the cave. Others were working to pump water out of the cave. “It was a huge effort.” An estimated 10,000 people contributed to the rescue effort, including more than 100 divers, representatives from about 100 government agencies, 900 police officers, 2,000 soldiers and numerous volunteers.
Once the team was found, how to get the kids out was the next challenge.
That’s where Doc Rush came in.
In Westhampton at the time, Rush recalled, “I got a phone call from an unmarked overseas telephone on July 4, from Master Sergeant Derek Anderson in Thailand.” Anderson, the senior enlisted leader on the rescue mission, was asking for help.
“They gave me information about the children,” Rush said. “The boys were excreting where they were living, licking water off the cave wall to stay hydrated. Many couldn’t swim.”
It would be impossible to bring them enough food for four months so they could wait out the monsoon. There was no way to get the air clean. They were down to about 15 percent oxygen level. At that point, he said, “You begin to worry that oxygen level is incompatible with life. There was no way they were going to last for four months, and we thought they would all die if they stayed there.”
Once the current, the flow, became too strong, divers wouldn’t be able to bring them supplies.
“That was my role, to have someone agree or disagree to proceed with the mission,” Rush said. As the highest-ranking military medical resource involved for the Americans, he had to sign off on the critical decision to sedate the team members so they can be transported through the water to safety.
Officials believed there was maybe a 40 percent survival rate, he recalled. “They thought half or more than half the children would die because nobody’s ever done this before. It was a very far-fetched idea.”
How to sedate the children, was Rush’s next challenge. He connected with a fellow flight surgeon who is a professor in pediatric anesthesiology to help brainstorm dosages, along with medical counterparts overseas.
The Thai government felt an additional level of confidence moving ahead with the approval of a high level medical officer, O’Hagan said.
The rescue effort began on July 8. As divers swam through the passages to the boys, others waited at checkpoints along the route — there were nine chambers along the passages to the boys. Brisbin and his partner, Technical Sergeant John Merchand, a fellow 31st Rescue Squadron pararescueman, were in a partially submerged narrow tunnel approximately 2 feet wide and 100 to 150 feet long. Their task was to move the boys from chamber three to two.
With 13 divers stationed at the chambers in the cave, it took approximately nine hours to lead four boys per day to safety, Brisbin recalled.
In the third sump between chambers two and three, Brisbin and Merchand would wait in an air pocket and lower the patient on a litter, make sure he was still secure and swim him underwater through a passage and pass him through to the next person waiting in another air pocket. The litters provided rigidity and protection, but rescuers also used custom-made diving harnesses, adjusted to fit children, for areas too narrow for litters. In those spots, divers would tow kids in the harnesses. When rescuers got to a section with more dry areas, they’d have to carry the kids or use a rope system. A member of a volunteer mountain rescue crew teamed up with pararescuemen to build and design the vertical system.
Each team had an assigned segment of the cave.
In Brisbin’s area of the cave, patients were lowered to him using ropes and pulleys from an area some 50 meters tall. “The terrain was really heinous, even to just walk over. Lots of holes and drops and hazard areas,” he said.
When the first kid showed up, Brisbin felt “excited, with trepidation. It’s a big responsibility.” The boys had held on for so many days. Now was not the time for something bad to happen.
There was a 45-minute-to-an-hour gap between arriving patients. Knowing that officials estimated not everyone would survive, Brisbin admitted there was anxiety.
The only way divers could communicate was to yell up the slope to the divers ahead of or behind them. They’d see the rope that led the way move and yell, “We’ve got a fish on the line,” and the divers would know to expect the next patient.
On the second day, Brisbin and Merchand heard “a fish on the line.”
And waited. And waited.
Rescuers in the next chamber stopped feeling the line move. A diver had gotten disoriented, and surfaced in a chamber he didn’t recognize. “He thought he just killed himself and this kid he was responsible for,” Brisbin related. The diver coming out behind him, found him, thankfully, and brought him back to the line.
“I remember the last kid came out, we moved them through, I remember looking at my buddy, saying, ‘This is unbelievable. This is working so well.’” He felt “extremely lucky and a very strong sense of reward. That all the preparation and training was worth it.”
The rescuers only found out how their charges fared at the end of their 12-hour days. For three days, they stayed in the cave, emerging only to sleep while another crew reset equipment and oxygen tanks.
Four boys were rescued the first day, four the second, and four, plus their coach, on the third day. Most divers waited until the last Thai SEAL who’d waited with the kids came out of the cave.
Brisbin never did meet the children he helped save. They were whisked off to an area hospital, and “I didn’t want to pester them,” he said.
Meanwhile, back in Westhampton. “Once I was finished with my part, he [Master Sgt. Derek Anderson in Thailand] was texting me, rescue by rescue. I was watching the news, and he was texting me. I became super aware, God forbid something bad happened, somebody was going to be calling me. We were in the middle of something unique and serious and the entire world was watching.”
“It was a fascinating experience,” Brisbin summarized, expressing love for Thailand and its people. The airman said he was grateful, too, for the opportunity to work with an extraordinary team, back in Thailand, and here in Westhampton.
“I feel very lucky to be a part of this job,” he said. Pararescuemen are “very special people,” undertaking a unique job in the military. “Our whole job is to go help people and save people. … The 106th is special in the same way — an entire unit of airmen, their whole job is to train and be ready to go.”
Rush has been with the ANG since 2008. Three years after the cave rescue, Brisbin completed his service in the Air Force and signed on the Air National Guard at the 106th Rescue Wing stationed at Gabreski, becoming one of the people O’Hagan calls “difference makers.”