Several hundred technicians, civil guards and firefighters were still taking turns Saturday in Spain, trying to reach a child of two years, who fell on January 13 in a deep and narrow well, without knowing if he could survive.
This rescue operation, unprecedented in the country according to the media, has been taking place day and night since Sunday in the mountain of the commune of Totalan, in Andalusia, with the support of the local population. A giant perforator could be installed in emergency on the site where the technicians began to dig, on Saturday, a vertical tunnel, parallel to the well, according to the images diffused by the Spanish public television (TVE).
The piercing of the tunnel could last about fifteen hours. "We hope that this work can be done as quickly as possible and that the conditions from now on will be more favorable than they have been so far," said the engineer Ángel García Vidal, who directs the team of technicians. The instability of the terrain and the hardness of some rocks made earthworks and drilling particularly difficult. The breakthrough of the tunnel could last about fifteen hours if the conditions are favorable, had previously explained Ángel Garcia Vidal. When the vertical tunnel to be dug will reach a certain depth - the level where the child would be - miners will be responsible for digging "by hand" a connection with the well, which could last about twenty hours, according to TVE.
No proof of life. The chances of survival of the little boy, named Julen, are very slim. No proof of life has been given since his fall in the abandoned well 25 cm in diameter and more than 100 m deep, when he played near the place where his parents picnicked. The media, which track these operations hour by hour, reported that Julen's parents had already lost, in 2017, a first three-year-old child, for a heart problem.
A well probably built without a permit. The Civil Guard heard the parents and the contractor who dug the well, according to a spokesman for the police, who argued that it was common for this type of accident. The well was not reported when the child fell in and a source from the Andalusian regional government indicated that the contractor had not requested the necessary permits to dig it.