Rescuers pump in oxygen into the well shaft using a pipe and try to get a child, who had fallen in the shaft, out by tying a sack at the end of a rope and lowering it in at Shahjahanpur Railway Colony in the capital yesterday. Photo: Palash Khan Zihad A high-powered camera has failed to locate a four-year-old boy who allegedly fell into an abandoned well shaft at Shahjahanpur Railway Colony in Dha
ka, prompting officials to doubt whether the child had at all fallen into the hole. The camera reached down the 14-inch diameter well shaft and sent minute details of a cocksheet and a house gecko, Brigadier General Ali Ahmed, director general (DG) of Fire Service, told reporters. It could not go beyond 300 feet due to obstruction by the debris, he added. In a second attempt, the camera was sent again around 4:00am. It got obstructed again after reaching 240 feet, private television channel Ekattor TV reports quoting rescuers. “From what we have seen from the footage of the camera, we can say there is no-one there,” State Minister for Home Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told reporters around 2:45am, almost 11 hours after the rescue operation began. “Though we can’t see any human being there, we are not wrapping up our operation. We will remove the debris to be certain,” said Ahmed. Zihad, son of a local school guard Nasiruddin, allegedly fell inside the 14-inch diameter shaft, around 40 yards from his house, around 4:00pm while playing with other children. Advertisement Commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Benazir Ahmed said police would probe whether the news was a hoax. UPDATE #ChildRescue: 254m deep footage from #Wasa borehole camera shows a rubber sandal http://t.co/jD0D5Vhxtn pic.twitter.com/HCSrnjHQ2m — The Daily Star (@dailystarnews) December 26, 2014 UPDATE #ChildRescue: Experts fear presence of water end of the 300ft Wasa well, camera sent to locate 'alive' Ziad http://t.co/gODUerseBy — The Daily Star (@dailystarnews) December 26, 2014 UPDATE #ChildRescue: Special camera to be used in 'catchersystem' to bring out 4yr-old alive http://t.co/Llt7TMmzEW pic.twitter.com/W3XknV7sUR — The Daily Star (@dailystarnews) December 26, 2014 THE FALL The hole reinforced with steel pipe would be used for pumping out underground water but had been abandoned for around a year with allegedly no lid over it. Belal Hossain, who first informed the Fire Service and Civil Defence of the incident, said while he was going to his shop by the playground around 4:10pm, a little girl named Fatema ran to him and said one of her playmates had fallen inside the hole. He immediately raised an alarm to gather more people. They tried to pull out the boy using a rope but failed. Post by The Daily Star. Then around 4:35pm, Belal informed the firemen, who quickly reached the spot. Talking to journalists, Iftekhar Alam, superintendent engineer of BADC, said there might be water after 240 feet of the shaft of the abandoned well. STILL ALIVE? Major AKM Shakil Newaz, director operations of the Fire Service and Civil Defence, was overseeing the rescue operation conducted by six firefighting units. Post by The Daily Star. He said the boy is believed to be stuck 400-foot deep inside the well. People who were present there said they could hear whimpers and cries of a boy from inside the shaft. Talking to Ekattor TV at 1:45am, Fire Service DG Ali Ahmed said they recorded the response of the child around 11:15pm. Post by The Daily Star. OXYGEN, JUICE PACKETS SENT Juice packets were sent and oxygen was being pumped into the hole to keep the boy alive. Ekattor TV reported quoting fire fighters that the trapped child had drunk the juice. FRANTIC EFFORTS Fire service personnel with the help of police made several abortive attempts to pull out the boy by lowering in a rope with a sack tied to it. Out of five times the rope was sent in, the kid grabbed it twice but could not hold on to it, Ekattor TV reported quoting rescuers. To make rooms, the rescuers pulled 350 feet of a three-inch diameter pipe from the well shaft. With hopes dimming fast, a volunteer attempted to climb down the well shaft minutes before the clock ticked zero hours. But authorities of the Fire Service did not let volunteer Bashir Ahmed, who worked to rescue many trapped workers at the collapsed Rana Plaza in Savar, considering the risk involved in it. Rescuers later decided to send a specialised tool named ‘catcher’ to rescue Zihad. A team of experts from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet) headed the effort to build the tool which has a hook at the end of three steel plates. But before sending ‘catcher’, the rescuers decided to take a look where in the well the child was remaining trapped. They sent in a specialised camera, which is owned by Dhaka Wasa, into the hole.
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