January 17, 2019

"We are not going to stop even one minute. Nobody in the rescue team is putting in doubt that we will bring him out, and we all remain confident that he will be alive."

Said a government official quoted in "Crews Race To Save 2-Year-Old Spanish Boy Who Fell Down 300-Foot Hole."
Members of a Swedish company that helped locate the 33 Chilean miners trapped underground in 2010 arrived on Tuesday, Spanish police told Reuters.

Julen was playing with his 1 1/2-year-old cousin when he fell down the hole.... The hole may have been drilled by someone in an attempt to find water, El País reports. "There are hundreds more like that one, covered with rocks, and nobody thinks that anyone could slip down one," an officer with the Civil Guard's nature protection service told the newspaper.
Julen had an older brother, Oliver, who died when he was 3 of cardiac arrest.

42 comments:

rhhardin said...

It's Jessica in the Well, an attempt at audience. But it's a boy so it won't work.

Big Mike said...

At times like this I regret my atheism; it would be comforting to have someone to pray to.

rhhardin said...

Only athiests can pray. Believers are just ordering pizza.

Fernandinande said...

Timmy O'Toole copycat.

Fernandinande said...

"hole ... to find water"

Sting:
There's a hole in my heart
As deep as a well
For that poor little boy
Who's stuck halfway to Hell.

Sideshow Mel:
Though we can't get him out
We'll do the next best thing.

Rainier Wolfcastle:
We go on TV and sing, sing, sing.

Chorus:
And we're sending our love down the well.

Krusty:
All the way down.

Chorus:
We're sending our love down the well.

Krusty:
Down that well.

Wince said...

Childhood obesity has its advantages.

Fernandinande said...

"We are sending you our strength,"

Is sending strength better than sending love?

Trumpit said...

It is sad that in early 21st century Spain, people must dig holes in the search for fresh water. There must be a better way.

rhhardin said...

I imagine they drill the holes, like everybody else. I myself have a 300 foot well.

Paul Zrimsek said...

Any word yet about how many of the rescuers are pedophiles?

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Has anyone confirmed that he is actually down there? My first thought was of Balloon Boy.

Fernandinande said...

There must be a better way.

In civilized countries water comes from a faucet.

"According to the Spanish Ministry for the Environment, there are 510,000 illegal wells in Spain. This figure implies that at least 3,600 hm of groundwater is extracted illegally each year, which equals the average water consumption of 58 million people. This probably underestimated volume, is in contrast with the volume that is legally extracted, which is estimated at 4,500 hm/year. This means that at least 45% of all water pumped from aquifers each year is extracted without regard to legal constraints.

This water is used for the irrigation of about one sixth of the total irrigated land in Spain, plus numerous golf courses, and for the supply of a disproportionate urban development.

In many cases, unauthorized water extraction is linked to other illegal practices, such as unauthorized transformation of protected areas or common lands into irrigated arable land. In Murcia, the Public Prosecutor’s Office is investigating ‘black market’ sales of illegally abstracted water for housing developments on the coast, illegal irrigation farmers or legal ones who have run out of water – often as a result of the illegal abstractions.

Undoubtedly, illegal water use has very little to do with meeting individuals’ ‘basic’ needs, and, in most cases, it supports businesses related with agriculture and disproportionate urban development, at the expense of the legal users and the environment."

Trumpit said...


"I imagine they drill the holes, like everybody else. I myself have a 300 foot well."

I get my Évian H₂O from the supermarché.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Évian

stevew said...

I too have a 300 foot hole in my yard for sourcing water (my town does not supply water); and I live in a place (Northeast) with plenty of ground water. Of course, my hole has a pump at the bottom, pipes to the top, and a cap, so nothing will fall in.

Still, sad story if in fact the kid is down there. Hopefully still alive.

gspencer said...

Is his name Timmy O'Toole?

The next best thing to help the kid out of a well is to get Sting and Crusty to go on TV and,

sing
sing
sing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmOO4bFREdo

Anonymous said...

I'm surprised they have not used a Mike or Camera to determine if the kid is alive.

- 300 foot down?
- water at bottom?
- hypothermia?

lot's of big doubts here.

Curious George said...

I'll take the under.

Rick.T. said...

Movie remake: Jose in the Hole.

tim maguire said...

What a horrible thing, for the boy and for his family . There’s no way he’s coming out alive, our best hope is that he broke his neck and died early in the fall. The alternative is the stuff of nightmares.

Tomcc said...

I second what DrillSgt said. It's seems unlikely that unfortunate child is still alive, but, before they move heaven and earth (figuratively and literally) to assemble a rescue team and equipment, couldn't they place a camera down there? They make them for plumbers to check sewer lines; it can't be that hard to find one.

Temujin said...

This is not about this story, but about something recent and similar, the boys trapped in the cave in Thailand. I just finished reading the book 'The Boys in the Cave' by Matt Gutman. It gives amazing detail on the land, the people, the actual details of the cave and how extraordinary it was that they got all of the boys (and their coach) out alive. No one should have lived. The details to the story much more than you would know reading the basic news summaries of what happened. It's really an incredible story. And it took a world of help, Brit and Aussie cave divers, US strategic forces, Thai Seals, and assorted other local and international individuals.

If you're into this sort of thing, it's a pretty compelling book, albeit filled with a LOT of detail about cave diving.

Big Mike said...

People upthread who doubt that the boy is alive, yes, you’re right. But we in h. sapiens are not going to stop until he’s out, one way or the other. That’s what we do; that’s how we know we’re human.

n.n said...

Away from the veil, the fringe, there is intrinsic, and, in fact, superior value.

My name goes here. said...

Assuming they rescue him, when he grows up I bet he will be on city water.

Yancey Ward said...

Yes, if you don't know he is alive or not, you keep trying. To not do so is just unthinkable.

However, he is probably dead.

Trumpit said...

To rescue or not to rescue that is the question.

Given Schlump's monstrous government shutdown, Julen better learn to tread water.

tim maguire said...

What’s with the last few posts about keeping trying? Has anybody said we shouldn’t?

California Snow said...

You can easily get a camera and light down a well and see where the boy is at. All the equipment to video a well fits inside a normal van...cable and all. In the US, I could get one out there the same day in an emergency like this.
I'm assuming there is some sort of casing installed to keep the well open. If not there is the possibility that the well can collapse on itself. The boy falling could trigger some material to slough off and fall on top of him and basically bury him.
I've got a little boy the same age. I can't imagine the fear and anxiety his parents must be going through.

Leland said...

I'm glad they are going in with the mindset that the child is alive and confident the child will remain so. They wouldn't be much of a rescue team otherwise.

Based on the other news, I'm not so confident. 4 days have gone by already, and even the most recent reports say they haven't actually found him in the well, just a piece of the child's hair and candy. Something about this doesn't sound right. Unless the hair and candy was floating on water, in which case the child is under the water, I don't know how they can find those small items and not the much bigger toddler.

Josephbleau said...

Blogger Trumpit said...

"I imagine they drill the holes, like everybody else. I myself have a 300 foot well."

I get my Évian H₂O from the supermarché.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Évian

1/17/19, 2:44 PM

Trumpet lets the mask slip from time to time.

Fritz said...

The Drill SGT said...
I'm surprised they have not used a Mike or Camera to determine if the kid is alive.

- 300 foot down?
- water at bottom?
- hypothermia?

lot's of big doubts here.


300 ft wells are the rule around here, to get to the Aquaia and Nanjemoy aquifers. Outside the larger population centers, each house has one. Our community has 8 larger wells that serve 800 houses. It costs around $10k to drill one.

Part of the legal requirement for decommissioning a well (they fail, occasionally), is to block them up with cement to prevent something like this. They fail not so much because they run out of water at that depth, but because the screens the keep the dirt from getting to the pump plug or get crushed.

New wells have to go to the Patapsco aquifer, which is about 1000 ft down. They're significantly more expensive, about $100,000 to drill.

Rabel said...

There's video from inside the well at the Daily Mail which answers most of the questions above.

I'm having trouble with the link but it's not hard to find.

RIP

Josephbleau said...

Workers had been boring a hole horizontally when they hit a heavy stone, lead engineer Angel Garcia told The Associated Press. The plan now is to dig two parallel tunnels vertically, he says — but that digging can't start until at least Friday, as a platform to support heavy machinery must be installed first. Worse still, rain is forecast for the coming days.

Rescuers have found hair samples from the boy in soil within the shaft, providing "scientific evidence that the minor is there,"

This must be a very poor translation, if rescue workers were drilling a horizontal hole to save the boy were they starting the hole in a 300 ft deep valley next to the well? If they hit a heavy stone why did they not use a rock drill to cut through? If they dig two parallel tunnels vertically is that the same as drilling two new holes down? Where were the hair samples found? in the drill cuttings after they bored thru the boy's body? No Se comprehende.

tim maguire said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tim maguire said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tim maguire said...

Based on this article, there is absolutely no way the child is still alive and no way to get him out if he were.

madAsHell said...

Évian

Naive spelled backwards!!

Sebastian said...

"Members of a Swedish company"

Like, white dudes? Like, boys will be boys?

Bob Loblaw said...

Eh... how likely is it a two-year-old fell 300 feet and lived?

Fernandinande said...

"Swedish company"

"Stockholm Precision Tools told after the 2010 rescue of the miners how an SPT North-Seeking Gyroscope Survey instrument had made it possible to find the men alive after 17 days trapped underground at the San Jose copper-gold mine near Copiapo in the Atacama Desert."

+

Solid State Downhole Gyro Survey Tools
Designed from the ground up to be the industry's most accurate

Larry J said...

Bob Loblaw said...
Eh... how likely is it a two-year-old fell 300 feet and lived?


It depends on how tight a fit it was between the child's body and the walls of the hole.

Leland said...

Its already mid-afternoon in Spain, and I'm not finding any updated stories. It just doesn't sound good at all.