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November 11, 2014

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4-year-old dies in manhole plunge

CONSTRUCTION workers have been accused of leaving the cover partly off a manhole into which a 4-year-old boy fell and died.

Yesterday, the manhole inside a road widening construction site at Husong Road in Songjiang District was covered and the area fenced off.

Song Fu’an fell into the hole at around 7pm on Sunday night as he played outside the restaurant where his parents work.

The little boy’s body was found five hours later in a sewage pipe by rescuers.

His father, 37-year-old Song Yan, had leapt into the 10-meter-deep manhole that was filled with 8 meters of water desperately searching for his son, but only found his shoe.

“Seeing that the manhole wasn’t fully covered, I knew that he must have fallen into it,” Song told Shanghai Daily yesterday.

Song said workers had uncovered the manhole on Sunday to pump water from another manhole into it. But they didn’t cover it completely after leaving about 5:30pm, he claimed.

Song and his wife Zhang Chanying, who are from central China’s Hunan Province, were busy delivering takeaway orders while their son played with another boy.

When Song returned, the other boy told him that his son was missing.

While Song attempted to find his son, the emergency services were called and firefighters were on the scene within minutes.

As the shaft was connected to the sewer network, rescuers feared that the boy had been carried into the sewage pipe system.

After local water bureau staff pumped water from the hole and connecting pipes, the boy’s body was finally discovered around midnight in a pipe hundreds of meters away.

Fu’an’s parents and nearby residents said the construction site had not been fenced off and no warning signs put up.

Following the tragedy, workers yesterday fenced off the site, covered the hole completely and erected warning signs, said Fu’an’s parents.

Shanghai Daily reporters yesterday saw the names of the Shanghai Electric Power Co and the Shanghai Huasheng Electric Power Engineering Co on the barriers.

When contacted, the Shanghai Electric Power Co said that it bore no responsibility for the accident.

However, Fu’an’s parents claims that the company has offered to meet them on Friday to discuss the accident.

This is not the first fatal manhole accident involving children in recent years.

A 3-year-old boy died in February last year after falling into a manhole in Pudong New Area.

Also in Pudong, an 11-year-old boy died after falling into a manhole covered only by a plywood sheet in July last year.

Police are still investigating Sunday’s accident.




 

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