January 26, 2019

"Julen Roselló, the two-year-old boy who fell into a borehole in Totalán, Málaga, on Sunday January 13, was located dead on Saturday at 1.25am, after an intense 13-day search mission."

"The emergency services began the judicial process to remove the corpse in the early hours of Saturday, after the family of the young boy were informed of the grim discovery.... The rescue efforts were constantly delayed over the last 13 days by the difficulty of the terrain where the borehole – which had been dug in search of water, but apparently not properly covered up – was located.... The work of the brigade, which began on Thursday afternoon, was long and arduous. To reach Julen’s body they had to cope with a number of obstacles and take huge security measures. They even had to resort to small explosive charges in order to get through the rock. They also had to wait for a range of issues to be solved before the rescue tunnel could be properly shored up. In the end, their rescue efforts were in vain."

So reads the English translation from El País.

7 comments:

Danno said...

Two years old is a bit young to be free-range.

David Begley said...

El Pais is approved by The Trust Project out of Santa Clara University.

I see that WaPo is also approved. Joke.

Wince said...

If a child is at the wrong end of a birth canal instead of a bore hole, NY Gov. Cuomo for some reason especially wanted us to know he doesn’t care what happens to him.

Ray - SoCal said...

Sad situation. The other parents son died of a heat attack while walking on the beach.

Be interesting to read an analysis of what could have worked.

Tom T. said...

My recollection is that he was out with older family members, and no one noticed that the hole was there. After all this time, I don't think there was any serious hope that he might still be alive, and it sounds like there might never have been a realistic option for saving him.

I'm guessing that "judicial" is probably a mis-translation somehow.

Fritz said...

If I was on Twitter, I'd retweet "Sad!"

When I think back, I was lucky to survive childhood.

Big Mike said...

I'm pretty sure that the child died immediately or almost so. I'd be very surprised if the rescuers weren't aware from the start that this was recovery exercise and not a rescue exercise.