Boy in sewer saved after poking fingers out of manhole cover
MADISON, Wis. — An 11-year-old boy sucked into a flooded Wisconsin storm sewer was saved when a firefighter saw the boy’s fingers pop through an opening in a manhole cover.
The rescue Tuesday came as storms pounded the southern half of the state and southeastern Minnesota.
The Calumet County Sheriff ’s Office said the boy was playing with friends in a flooded drainage ditch after the rains passed around 6 p.m. in the Village of Harrison. He disappeared under the water and didn’t surface.
A dive team, sheriff’s deputies and volunteer firefighters responded.
Deputy Fire Chief Wesley Pompa said members found a bystander trying to hold the boy, but the boy was sucked into a culvert that led to the storm sewer.
The rescuers could do nothing except try to determine where the flow might take the boy. Pompa called the village road superintendent, Bob Kesler, to the scene to help map out the sewers.
Pompa and Kesler were standing on top of a manhole cover about 30 feet away from the ditch when Pompa saw the boy’s fingers pop through an opening in the cover. The boy had found an air pocket just beneath the manhole cover and was hanging onto a ladder leading up.
The firefighters wrenched the cover open. Pompa and Kesler lifted the boy to safety.
“He was hollering and talking to us and he was able to reach up for us,” Pompa said.
The boy was taken to the hospital, and authorities said he was alert and conscious after his ordeal. Pompa said he never got the boy’s name.
“I just thank God he was alive and he’d made it that long,” Pompa said. “It could have gone a million different ways but this one way it worked out for him.”