HYDERABAD: The high-tech equipment of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and the traditional techniques of state government officials including police and fire services and other private persons, working cumulatively for days together, could not save the life of a toddler who fell in an abandoned borewell at Chanuvelly village in Rangareddy district. None of the teams that participated in the rescue operation has a standard operating procedure and to add to that, the uncertain trial-and-error methods opted by them proved fatal.
At around 7.15 pm on Thursday, Chinnari, daughter of Yadagiri and Renuka, fell into a bore well. For sometime, before the police, revenue and state disaster response teams rushed to the spot, the girl’s parents tried pulling her up.
The girl, at that time, is said to be stuck at a depth of some 20 feet. The attempts of the parents made her slip to 40 feet. The operation of various agencies, which started at 40 feet, ultimately did not pay off as she slipped to 400 feet in the borewell and only her body parts and torn pieces of dress were recovered in the final air-flush technique.
Transport minister P Mahender Reddy said: “On Thursday, between 40 feet to 50 feet deep, the baby was still stuck along with the motor and was alive. She was crying and was even responding to her mother, which everyone here saw. While pulling up the motor, it was expected that the girl will also come up, but unfortunately, she slipped further and fell to 400 feet. On Saturday, after noticing water much deeper, we had come to a conclusion to at least recover the body, but only her clothes and some parts came out.”
Reacting to the incident while speaking to the media, Rangareddy collector M Raghunandan Rao said that every one must take responsibility for their actions or inactions that lead to such unfortunate incidents.
“One persons’s negligence leads to these kind of incidents. We have WALTA Act already in force, but how many people really follow that. Despite warnings, people are still negligent in closing the open and abandoned borewells,” he said.
He said that after the incident, every possible rescue team arrived by Thursday night. The next morning, teams from Nalgonda, NDRF joined. From 9.30 pm on Thursday to 5 am on Friday, the teams monitored her through cameras. She was moving and we kept on trying different techniques to bring her up.
“During the critical eight to nine hours, only her hands could be seen through the cameras and all the efforts to bring her up using different techniques failed. At 7 am on Friday, she stopped responding. The body temperature of the girl and the surrounding area was same. We could have come to conclusion that she had passed way, but we did not want to decide and rescue the baby and final effort was to pull her out using air-flush method,” he said.
The collector said no Standard Operations Procedure is in place yet to participate in rescue operations during such incidents, which should actually be present. “SOP should be framed at state government level and NDRF level, about first responders, doctors and experts, to study the situation, conditions, parameters and use the appropriate tools according to the manual,” he said. He further said massive awareness programmes and checks along with every individual’s responsible behaviour to close the open bore wells can only prevent such incidents in future.
Collector asks officials to seal abandoned borewells
Rajanna-Sircilla: District collector D Krishna Bhasker directed officials concerned that abandoned borewells be filled with granule or mud or a seal be made on top of it, in the wake of the Chinnari incident at Ikkareddygudem in Rangareddy district. The collector, in a press release on Sunday, alerted the authorities and owners of the borewells concerned to take initiation, else stringent action would be taken against them. The owners of borewells should construct a protection wall around it. He asked village secretaries and municipal authorities to recognise abandoned borewells.