Raphael dos Santos, a seven-year-old Brazilian kid, miraculously survived after being swept almost a thousand feet down a storm drain. In Cruz Alta, a city in the south, on Monday, he fell into a manhole while out with friends during a downpour. His buddies immediately informed Paulo Rocha, his father, that they were unable to help him.
Rocha claimed that when the kids notified him, he saw his son emerge from a manhole close to their house. He recalled, looking shocked, “The kids contacted me. I believed there was no chance of catching my son when I got there.
“He was practically sucked into the water pipe … it happened very quickly. When we realized, he was leaving two blocks away and half of my house. But he was very hurt.”
The boy who confessed he is now relieved sustained a deep cut above his left eyebrow and received 25 stitches, according to the Daily Mail.
“There was a lot of water, there wasn’t much space and then I couldn’t move too much,” he said. “I tried to lift my head, but I couldn’t.”
The pipeline split where water was routed to an area under a condominium, according to Rocha, so his kid was lucky to have been pulled down to the manhole where he emerged. He went on to say that his son could not have survived on his own.
“He literally crossed the entire pipe until he got to the bottom. We never imagined we would find him again,” Rocha said.
“He’s with me because of God, I was impressed, I’d never seen anything like it. In the last manhole, at the end of the street, where there is a ‘T’, he was lucky enough to go up, because he could have gone to the side, then we wouldn’t be able to find him anymore.”
The Cruz Alta Public Works Department reported that they acted in response to Monday’s record two inches of rain, which was a 29 percent increase over the usual for December. They sealed the manhole where the incident happened on Tuesday afternoon and inspected other drains in the city to make sure they were sealed properly.
“We reinforce our commitment to public safety and are committed to working to create a safer and more secure environment for our children and the entire community,” the city said in a statement.