‘Essentially diving in coffee’: Australian diver among team rushing to rescue people trapped in flooded Laos cave

Josh Richards joins international mission to extract five found alive and search for missing two

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An Australian cave diver is part of an international team that has been flown into Laos from around the world to rescue seven people stuck in a remote, flooded cave.

The group entered the cave in Xaysomboun province, central Laos, to hunt wildlife and search for gold more than a week ago, but heavy rain blocked the cave entrance. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/27/five-villagers-found-alive-in-laos-cave-as-search-continues-for-two-missing">Five of them were found alive this week, but two remain unaccounted for – and the rescuers, some of whom were involved in the https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/14/we-dont-know-how-it-worked-the-inside-story-of-the-thai-cave-rescue">rescue of a young Thai football team in 2018, still need to extract the survivors from the inundated passageways.