A lack of coordination among rescuers and an absence of proper training and equipment to conduct an operation of such kind led to Jihad’s death, professionals have concluded.
Dhaka’s Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (Wasa) has a borehole camera which it uses to inspect the depths of narrow water supply or sewerage shafts in the ground.
The camera was brought to the Shahjahanpur Railway Colony in the city yesterday when firefighters were trying to pull up the four-year-old from deep inside the abandoned well dug nearly a year ago for pumping out underground water.
Little Jihad had fallen into the well around 3:30pm on Friday, and the Fire Service began the rescue operation half an hour or so later.
Professionals said firefighters should not have pulled up the submersible filter and the pipe attached to it or done anything else at all without knowing Jihad’s actual position inside the well.
Sending the borehole camera down the well and knowing where Jihad actually should have been the first priority, they said, adding that it was particularly important also because Jihad was alive for a while.
The filter and the pipe were removed around 7:30pm and the camera could not be sent down before midnight.
Quamrul Islam, a professor of mechanical engineering at Buet, told the Dhaka Tribune: “In such a situation, the priority should have been knowing the exact depth of the well and checking its structure. If the depth could not be ascertained, the next thing to be done was to know the exact position of the kid by sending down the borehole camera before doing anything else.”
Experts from the LGRD Ministry and Dhaka Wasa also took part in the operation. They had formally called off the operation around 2:50pm on Saturday, saying they did not find any trace of a human being inside the 16-inch wide pipeline.
Just 10 minutes later, a few volunteers retrieved Jihad’s body with an improvised mechanical “catcher.”
Confusion prevailed as to whether or not any expert from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet) were consulted.
Buet Registrar Dr AKM Masud confirmed that the firefighters never officially sought any assistance from them and no team of experts went there. He said two of their students went there on their own.
When contacted, Prof Dr Md Ehsan, head of Buet’s mechanical engineering department, told the Dhaka Tribune: “Nobody sought our assistance. But we held a meeting with two of our senior teachers – Prof Dr Quamrul Islam and Prof Dr Rashid Sarker – and decided to go there on our own. But when the firefighters said there was nobody inside the well, we held back our decision.”
According to a note posted on Facebook by Tanvir Arafat Dhrubo, a student of mechanical engineering at Buet, he along with another student from his department named Imtiaz went to the spot around 10pm on Friday after seeing the news on television.
They took with them the primary sketch of an improvised “catcher” and showed it to Brig Gen Ali Ahmed Khan, director general of Fire Service and Civil Defence. Ali Ahmed advised them to give it to a construction firm named Icon which, he said, had offered voluntary engineering services if needed.
Dhrubo and Imtiaz then took the design to Icon’s Aftabnagar workshop and a catcher was developed there. When the catcher was brought to the spot, it was found to be too big for the diameter of the well. So, they took it back to the workshop for mending.
Around 3am on Saturday – nearly 12 hours after Jihad had fallen into the well – the two Buet students came back to the colony and informed the Fire Service DG that they had given another design to Icon technicians.
The DG, however, told them to stop their work because firefighters, even though they used the borehole camera, had not been able to trace any human being inside the well. The two students then waited for another hour or so and left the area because there was nothing they could do.
“I am writing this note to clear some confusions. Two of us went there with the sketch all right, but we were not authorised by Buet. But some media started referring to us as a ‘team of experts from Buet.’ We clearly said several times that we went there on our own out of a sense of responsibility; nobody sent us. But because the media presented us wrongly, people started building up hopes, banking on us,” Dhrubo wrote in the long note.
Saying no credit goes to them, he also wrote: “We have no idea who pulled up Jihad in the end...No matter who did it, there is no way we can say the device they used was designed by us...As far as I have understood from news reports, it was entirely an effort by the local people. So, if someone deserves the credit, it must be those people.”
The Dhaka Tribune has learned that the technicians from Icon never stopped working on the catcher although the firefighters’ boss had told them to. It was eventually with that catcher that the volunteers retrieved Jihad’s body.
Buet professor Quamrul suggested that an electronic equipment called a “hinge” could have been used. It is a remote-controlled device that has a human-mouth-like chamber than can go down depths and shovel a human body into it.
Fire Service DG Brig Gen Khan, talking to the Dhaka Tribune yesterday, refused to accept this as a failure of his men.
“We do not have the training and equipment to conduct such an operation...Although, some volunteers rescued the boy, we have worked together since the beginning and did not refuse anyone who wanted to join in...We even permitted two students when they said they were from Buet and wanted to help,” he said.
Asked why they had called off the operation, the Fire Service DG said: “It is true that we suspended the rescue operation, but it meant that we only stopped looking for a human body because Wasa’s borehole camera did not give us anything. Our search for Jihad’s body was still on and we were planning to pump out all the water from the well.
“Moreover, this was a totally unforeseen case not only for Bangladesh, I can strongly debate that such an incident has never happened in the entire sub-continent before...We have the experience of bringing out a human body from a manhole, but this case is so strange. It was so tiny in size and it was so deep.”
He also said: “We have already made a decision to launch a project to provide training and purchase fitting equipment to conduct an operation in such a confined space.”
When contacted, Wasa Managing Director Taqseem A Khan told the Dhaka Tribune: “We have the equipment to pull out a motor or other machines from a depth of 300-foot or 600-foot using hooks; but we have no equipment to pull out a human.
“I think such accidents can be prevented by sealing off abandoned pipelines,” he suggested, claiming that no pipelines under Wasa’s authority are left open anywhere.
