Rescue operations are underway at the site outside Manchal village where a >four-year-old Girija fell into an abandoned borewell on Sunday morning as the elders in the family were picking cotton in an adjacent field.
Around half-a-dozen excavators, dozens more support vehicles and a score of people are at the village, 13 km away from Ibrahimpatnam.
Within hours of the tragedy, the administration swung into action. While the police, led by Inspector P. Jagadeeshwar, cleared the area, the Revenue department organised the logistics, including water for the rescue workers, diesel for the excavators – the JCB Front-End Loaders involved in digging a parallel trench in their bid to reach the girl who was suspected to be trapped between 40 to 45 feet deep inside the earth.
The operation had the active involvement of those from the National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) too. The Emergency Management Research Institute ambulance (108), closest to the hole into which the girl fell, is continuously pumping in oxygen.
Twenty hours into the operation, the rescue personnel had reached a depth of slightly over 32 feet and as the thought that they would reach the level where the girl would be, the adrenaline was noticeably on the rise.
Joint Collector-II (Ranga Reddy), M.V. Reddy said they first sent in a weighted string into the abandoned borewell and anxiously saw it going deeper and deeper till it stopped at a point. They repeated the operation thrice to make sure that it would not go in and took measurements, finding it to be around 41 feet. Next a string with a camera and light attached and found a sheet of water.
“Images from the camera did not show us the girl but we believe she must be somewhere out of the reach of the camera’s focus. We strongly hope that Girija must be stuck there. The oxygen that has been continuously pumped in would, we hope, keep her alive. Each one of us here has his fingers crossed and praying God, as we are continuing our work,” Mr. Reddy told The Hindu .
It is expected to take another couple of hours for rescue workers digging the parallel trench, to reach the said depth.
