Rescuers in Vietnam are trying to rescue a 10-year-old boy who fell into a deep and narrow open hole at a construction site on New Year’s Eve.
The boy, Ly Hao Nam, had been searching for scrap metal with friends when he fell into the shaft at a bridge construction site in the Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap, on the morning of Dec. 31.
He was heard crying for help shortly after he fell into the shaft of a hollow concrete file just 10 inches (25 cm) wide.
Hundreds of rescuers have since continued their efforts to rescue the boy, but as of Jan. 2, they received no response from him as they tried to pinpoint his location by lowering a camera down the 35-meter (115-foot) long support pillar.
“I cannot understand how he fell into the hollow concrete pile, which has a diameter of a (25 cm) span only, and was driven 35 meters into the ground,” Le Hoang Bao, director of Dong Thap province’s Department of Transport, told local newspaper Tuoi Tre News.
Efforts to rescue the boy by lifting the pile with cranes and excavators have so far been unsuccessful, various media reported.
Rescue workers have pumped oxygen into the pile and have also softened the soil around it to try to pull the pillar up to save him. But the pile has since tilted slightly, making rescue or recovery efforts complicated.
State broadcaster VTV reported that rescuers were digging 35 meters deep around the concrete pile to reach the boy, adding that the space was so tight that even a rope would not fit around him.
Authorities “are not sure about the current condition of the boy,” Tuoi Tre News reported, per AFP. According to the outlet, the boy “has stopped interacting with the outside though oxygen had always been pumped into the” hole.
