Millions watch doomed effort to save boy from well
CHINA: One of largest rescue operations ever mounted in China to save a single life ended unsuccessfully yesterday when a 5-year-old boy was found dead at the bottom of a dry well.
Millions of citizens had watched online as rescue workers moved mountains of earth in their efforts to reach the child. Zhao Zicong, known as Congcong, disappeared on Sunday morning while playing with his sister on farmland in Lixian county, near the city of Baoding in northern China.
His father was harvesting cabbages nearby. Rescue efforts quickly focused on an irrigation well 30cm wide that had been abandoned five years ago but was left open, like many wells in the area.
The child’s wooden blocks, or shoes, had been spotted inside the 40m deep well. The rescuers reached the boy at about 11.10pm local time on Thursday. As he was lifted out, his grandfather kowtowed to the 500 workers. Congcong was rushed away by ambulance but he had been found too late. At least ten million Chinese people logged on to a live feed of the rescue operation. The scene was quickly flooded with donations of cash, food and medical supplies, plus 165 vehicles that helped to widen the neck of the well to about 100m by excavating more than 200,000 cubic metres of sandy soil.
Oxygen was pumped down the well in the hope of keeping Congcong alive.
However, cracks in the well shaft and the risk of land collapse forced rescuers to abandon the machinery and revert to three men digging by hand inside a tiny space.
‘‘I wish that he died suddenly instead of suffering hunger, cold, pain and fear for a long time,’’ posted one sympathiser on the Tencent media platform that had been showing live coverage.
China indulges in soulsearching about its ‘‘uncaring’’ society whenever news emerges of people ignoring strangers in distress, as passersby often prove reluctant to help for fear that they will be falsely blamed for having caused the accident.
China needed more professional rescue teams and better tools to handle this kind of operation, Luo Yun, an engineering professor, told the China Daily newspaper. - The Times