More than 100 Spanish firefighters, police officers and rescuers are searching for a two-year-old boy who fell down a deep borehole in Málaga province on Sunday afternoon.
The boy, named Yulen, was out walking with his family when he fell down the hole, which is 110 metres deep and 25cm wide.
He cried out when he fell but has not been heard from since. On Monday morning, rescuers came across a cup and a bag of sweets he was holding when he disappeared.
The sweets were discovered in a layer of compacted, wet sand 78 metres down the borehole, which had been left uncovered.
Rescuers have lowered a camera into the shaft but have yet to locate the boy. As the sides of the hole have not been shored up, they are trying not to do anything to provoke a collapse.
The Spanish government’s representative in the region, María Gámez, said the rescue team was looking into “every technical possibility” given that the hole was too narrow for an adult to enter.
“No one is technically prepared to rescue someone from such a narrow hole, but the technology exists to get into places as narrow and deep as this, and everything is being considered,” Gámez said.
By midday on Monday, the team had removed 30cm of earth from the shaft.
“It’s not just about getting down there, it’s also about keeping the hole open so that the rescue can happen,” Gámez added.
Bernardo Moltó, a spokesman for the Málaga Guardia Civil, said the teams were trying to clear the layer of wet sand but were also looking into sinking a parallel shaft to locate and rescue Yulen.
“So far, what we’ve managed to do is drill into that blockage a bit,” he said. “We’re going to try to clear the earth with a truck-mounted machine and try to dig a parallel tunnel, but to do that, we need to shore up the shaft to reach the boy.”
