UPDATE: “Julen is already the son of all,” said Garcia Vidal in his most heartfelt statement, surprising in a technician. Like Julian Moreno, responsible for the Firefighters of Malaga, the faith that the child is still alive forces them not to be discouraged despite the continuous adversity, the last one received on Tuesday to have to continue drilling for not being able to fit the last of the tubes with which the work will be clad to ensure the safety of the miners.
El Pais reports that hundreds of people and dozens of companies have been involved, public and private capital to execute jobs that would normally take months. Sketches, drawings, graphics, calls to all types of companies and experts and several meetings a day are behind every movement of operators and machinery on the ground.
Ángel García Vidal, head of the school in Malaga, who after inspecting the hole in the Totalán farm, the impossible access to that farm by heavy machinery and the complexity of a land without previous geological study, made the statement that has marked Julen’s rescue against the clock: “This is not a rescue operation but a humanitarian civil engineering work.”
UPDATE: The vertical gallery cladding tasks had to be stopped when the tubes were stuck 40 meters deep, so the technicians have removed the tubing in order to widen the hole and prevent the steel cylinders from getting stuck or break in the descent to the level of 60 meters.
The drill has returned to the works for the widening, for which first it is necessary to remove the earth in the orifice in order to facilitate the work of the enormous bit.
In this state of affairs, the technicians prefer not to give an estimate of the time that this task will entail or when the rescue miners may descend to dig the horizontal tunnel towards the well where the small one is expected to be.
The vertical tunnel parallel to the well in which Julen fell nine days ago has reached the 60 meters of depth needed to continue the rescue. In his excavation, which took three days, very hard materials were produced, according to the Government Sub-delegation in Malaga.
When the vertical drilling is finished, the miners of the Hunosa Salvage Brigade will dig by hand a horizontal tunnel of about four meters to try to reach the place where the child is believed to be. This final phase of the rescue will take a maximum of 24 hours, according to Ángel García Vidal, coordinator of the operation.
Meanwhile, the Court of Instruction number 9 of Malaga has opened proceedings on Tuesday to know the exact circumstances in which Julen fell into the pit.
Earlier: Rescuers keep working around the clock, in a race against time to save two-year old Julen Rosello who fell down a 110-metre deep borehole on an Andalusian hillside nine days ago.
The vertical tunnel parallel to the well in which Julen fell eight days ago reached tonight the 60 meters of depth needed to continue with the rescue.
Reports state that a scream was heard but then nothing more. The borehole, made to a depth of 110 meters, was reportedly unmarked and the opening had been covered partially by some loose rocks.The boy disappeared around 2pm and the parents raised the alarm immediately. By nightfall a team of more than 100 rescue workers including teams from fire brigade, Civil Guard, Local and National Police, and emergency health services were all mobilized to the scene.
Here’s what you need to know about the battle to find him and whether or not he could still be alive.
What actually happened?
Two-year-old Julen Rosello was with his parents Vicky and Jose on a family day out on Sunday, January 13th.They went from their home in El Palo, Malaga to visit relatives who owned a rural property in Totalán, in the hills outside Malaga where the group planned `to cook a paella outside in the sunshine.Vicky, reportedly walked away from the group to speak on the phone and father, Jose was looking for kindling to start the fire over which to cook the paella.Little Julen was playing just a few feet away from the group with his young cousin when he somehow managed to slide into the narrow opening of a borehole that had been made a month earlier to look for water.
Has there been any trace of the boy?
On Monday morning, a robot equipped with a camera had been lowered into the hole to a depth of 78 meters where it found a blockage caused by fallen earth and rocks, presumably dislodged during the boy’s descent.
A small bag of sweets that the boy had been clutching was discovered in the hole as well as a couple of strands of hair that forensic tests confirmed belonged to Julen.
Why was the hole even there?
The shaft was made illegally by the property’s owner in an attempt to find underground water, a common practice in this arid corner of Spain where in order to grow anything, extra water resources are needed.
The hole, with a diameter of between 25 and 30 cm, was reportedly covered over with a pile of rocks but had no marker signalling the danger.
“There are hundreds more like that one, covered with rocks, and nobody thinks that anyone could slip down one,” an officer with Seprona, the Civil Guard’s nature protection service, told El Pais.
With rescue efforts now in the ninth day and the latest update suggesting that the breakthrough won’t be made until early Tuesday, the obvious question is why is it taking so long?
First of all the geography of the area complicates a massive rescue operation like this. The farm is hard to reach by a car, let alone huge vehicles transporting diggers, drills and pipes.
The second problem is the terrain itself, causing recurrent landslides.
The first efforts were concentrated on digging an angled tunnel into the hillside directly to the point where the boy was thought to be, but attempts to dig a horizontal tunnel were abandoned after it kept caving in.
The focus was then put entirely on making a vertical tunnel parallel to the borehole itself.
Experts described the rescue efforts as a feat of civil engineering that under normal circumstances would take months to plan and complete, but one that they would attempt to complete within days.
via El Pais/The Local
