This is great news, but sadly their lives are still very much at risk. They are too deep to drill down to, there is a lot of rain to pump out (and the rain can continue), and they can't swim (even if they could, this is a hard dive for those that can).
Found this from a Bill Whitehouse:
Bill Whitehouse, vice-chair of the British Cave Rescue Council which is helping the rescue efforts, played down speculation the boys could be taught to dive.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he suggested they could be guided through the water in “packages”.
Asked how feasible it would be to teach the children to dive, he said: “It is certainly not easy. The other alternative is that you literally bring them out in packages. In other words you fit them with diving equipment: a full face mask, instead of having a gag in your mouth like a lot of divers use; package them up; put the correct weights on them so that they are neutrally bouyant and are not going to get stuck again. It has been done before.”
He also explained how the British divers reached the trapped group.
They were diving upstream in the system so they were having to swim against the current,
or pull themselves along the walls. Some of the cave is fairly constricted and other points
aren’t. I gather the actual diving section was about 1.5km, about half of which was
completely flooded and about half of which was open.
They estimated that a round trip to where the party was and back again is probably about three hours.
Whitehouse was sceptical about the prospects of pumping enough water out of the cave to allow the boys to walk to safety. He said: “They are trying to do that with pumping, but pumping a monsoon away is not that easy.”