Moroccans are following with great emotion the rescue efforts of Rayan, the 5-year-old child who fell into a 32-metre well in the village of Ighrane, in the commune of Tamorot (Chefchaouen province).
The accident brought this remote area into the national spotlight, and the child, who spent his second day at the bottom of a well apparently kept open without safety barriers, caused a stir.
Rayan’s mother confided with grief to the various media that rushed to the scene, emotion mixed with hope that her son would be rescued from the well safely.
The mother explains that on Tuesday afternoon, the family members could not find the child. After several searches, they heard moaning coming from the well, which prompted them to tie a phone to a rope and lower it to the bottom, where they discovered the child.
Rayan spent his first night at the bottom of the well, struggling with thirst and lack of oxygen, comforted by the presence of his parents and relatives, before elements of civil protection, local authorities and the Royal Gendarmerie began their rescue efforts, under the supervision of provincial authorities.
The next morning, a watch committee was set up to coordinate the rescue efforts. The committee initially devised a plan to extract the child directly from the well, but initial attempts were unsuccessful due to the narrow diameter of the hole (30 centimetres).
A second plan was thus developed, requiring the use of heavy machinery to dig parallel and diagonally to the hole, but with great care, lest the dredging operations cause the shaft to collapse.
These delicate operations continued throughout the day on Wednesday, since a depth of 32 metres is equivalent to the height of a 10-storey building or more.
At the same time, civil protection elements deployed a camera used in rescue operations to check Rayan’s health and communicate with him to keep him conscious, in addition to supplying him with water and oxygen through tubes.
In the meantime, two further attempts to extract the child directly from the well were made with the participation of volunteers from the Chefchaouen Association of Speleology and Mountain Activities, but these failed again because of the narrowness of the hole.
The scenario adopted after the failure to extract directly from the shaft is based on digging a parallel hole to the same depth as where Ryan is stuck, and then tunneling to the child.
During the day on Thursday, excavation efforts continued, with more than 22 metres dug, while taking care to avoid the shaft walls to prevent any collapse that would worsen the situation.
A Royal Gendarmerie medical helicopter was on the scene to transport the child, immediately after his rescue, to the hospital to receive the necessary first aid, while an ambulance with a medical staff led by a doctor specialising in resuscitation was also mobilised.
Rescue efforts will not stop until the child is reached, said an official at the scene, noting that rescue operations are intensifying in the hope of extracting Rayan as soon as possible.
Excavation operations are fraught with difficulties, the most important of which is the nature of the soil which is sandy in some layers and rocky in others.
The bulldozers are working to enlarge the diameter of the hole and remove the top layers for fear that the ground will collapse on the rescuers and the child.
Moroccans are following the rescue operation with great emotion via the media or through citizens present on the spot, while a wave of solidarity with the child and his family has been unleashed in Morocco and abroad, with a single watchword: “Save Rayan”.
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