Boy rescued after stuck in LA sewer pipe for 12 hours
LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles authorities have rescued a 13-year-old boy who fell into a drainage pipe at a park while spending Easter with his family.
Fire Department spokeswoman Margaret Stewart says Jesse Hernandez was found early Monday when crews opened a hatch on a system of pipes to lower a camera. The search lasted about 12 hours.
Jesse is described as alert and talking, and he was given a cellphone to call his family. He’s been taken to a hospital for a medical evaluation.
Hernandez was at Griffith Park on Sunday afternoon where he and his cousins were jumping on wooden planks in an abandoned maintenance building. One of the planks broke and the teen plunged 25 feet into a 4-foot-wide drainage pipe.
Officials studied maps of the closed sewage pipe system, which stretches hundreds of feet, and sent a camera attached to a flotation device 300 feet down a pipe.
Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman David Ortiz said rescuers couldn’t enter the drainage area themselves because of the hazardous environment.
Crews searched through the night.
