A Mexican fisherman has been pulled alive from a flooded limestone cave after surviving 15 days trapped more than 100 metres underground with only rainwater and a small air pocket to sustain him.
Erasto Crisanto Valdez disappeared on July 23 while fishing with his father near San Francisco La Paz in the state of Oaxaca. Rescue divers, including American cave-diving instructor Harry Gust and Rosalino Rivera, located Valdez on August 7 in a submerged cenote, where he had found an air chamber and a narrow underground stream that provided drinking water. Gust also recovered a spare air cylinder inside the cave system.
Valdez, who survived by drinking water, sleeping and praying while losing all sense of time, was hospitalised with severe dehydration and malnutrition following his rescue.