Hundreds of rescuers in Vietnam were battling for a third day Monday to save a 10-year-old boy who fell more than a hundred feet down a concrete shaft at a construction site New Year’s Eve.
The boy was reportedly heard calling for help shortly after he fell through a narrow, 25-centimeter wide open shaft of a concrete pile at a bridge construction site in the Mekong delta province Saturday morning while searching for scrap metal with friends.
But as of Monday, he hasn’t been responding to rescuers, who lowered a camera to help locate the boy’s position down the estimated 115-foot-long support pillar, according to Reuters.
Efforts to lift the pile with cranes and pillars have so far been unsuccessful.
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"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 Tuoi Tre News, a local newspaper, according to Reuters.
The newspaper reported that rescuers "are not sure about the current condition of the boy," as he "has stopped interacting with the outside though oxygen had always been pumped into the" hole.
AFP identified the trapped 10-year-old as Thai Ly Hao Nam. Video showed the boy's distraught family members being carried from the scene while awaiting news on his condition.
Crews have also been drilling and softening the surrounding soil to attempt – so far without success -- to pull up the concrete pillar.
According to AFP, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on Monday tapped federal rescuers to join local authorities’ efforts to save the boy.
