Baby saved from Laos dam disaster by Thai cave rescue volunteers

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APPATEU, Laos, July 27, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The rescue of a baby boy,
terrified and hungry after days without food, has been captured in a viral
video showing the infant survivor of a dam collapse in southern Laos being
carefully carried through swirling flood waters and waist-high mud.

Footage of volunteers from Thailand rescuing 14 people, including the baby,
went viral when it was released on Friday as an increasingly international
relief mission scrambles to save lives in a disaster that has left scores
dead and missing.

The survivors were stranded by flood waters after they fled up a hill on
Monday as the Xe-Namnoy dam broke under heavy rain, leaving several villages
devastated by flash floods.

The Thai team, who waded several kilometres through rushing water carrying
uprooted trees and debris to rescue the group, are fresh from efforts to help
free a youth football team trapped in a cave in the north of their country.

They have now come to help out in neighbouring Laos, which is poorly
equipped to deal with natural disasters of this scale.

“The boy is four months old. He didn’t have fever but he was crying, maybe
because of the cold weather,” Kengkard Bongkawong, one of the rescuers, who
is from Thailand’s northeast, told AFP.

“The baby was crying and looks terrified. Actually they were (all) still
terrified of the rushing water.”

The video had been watched nearly half a million times hours after it was
posted online on Friday. Earlier this week officials said 27 bodies had been
retrieved so far, with the country’s prime minister reporting 131 missing.

But on Friday the governor of Attapeu province Leth Xiayaphone revised down
the toll to five, saying the larger number previously given was “unconfirmed
information”.

Secretive Communist authorities in Laos are not used to international
scrutiny and have blocked access to foreign media, complicating efforts to
establish the exact death toll.

The dam disaster has also raised serious questions over Laos’ big bet on
hydropower to propel it out of poverty.