A young boy who fell into a drainage pipe while spending Easter with his family at a Los Angeles park has been found alive after more than 12 hours, ABC News reported Monday.
Thirteen-year-old Jesse Hernandez is recovering at the hospital after he fell some 25 feet through a wooden plank at Griffith Park on Sunday and was washed away into a series of drainage pipes.
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Authorities with the Los Angeles Fire Department said he was cold, wet and hungry, but was “alert and talking” after the terrifying ordeal.
LAFD Captain Erik Scott said it was a “miracle” Hernandez was found after being trapped in an “intricate, enclosed” sewage pipe system overnight. A “relentless” search by fire department personnel, Los Angeles Police Department, California Highway Patrol and crews from the Bureaus of Sanitation, Engineering and Contract Administration were all involved in the search of more than 6,000 feet of tunnels.
With the help of cameras placed on flotation devices sent down the sewer pipes, he was found in a four-foot tunnel with only a small space above him for enough air to keep him alive, according to the “Good Morning America” report.
“At 4 o’clock … one of the cameras saw some handprints on the sewer inside the pipe,” Adel Hagekhalil with the L.A. Bureau of Sanitation said. “The first thing they hear is, ‘Help.'”
“Right away they lowered the hose … and said, ‘Hold on.’ He held on and they reeled him up,” he added. “First thing [Jesse] wanted was a cell phone to call his family.”
Fire department officials said the boy and several friends had climbed over a chain-link fence and went into an abandoned shed on the property, close to where the family was having a picnic, when the boards broke.