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The clock is ticking and five days since Richard Thole was swallowed into a disused mine shaft the Ekurhuleni emergency services have said “chances of getting the boy alive were very minimal”.
This was said by the Ekurhuleni municipality emergency and disaster management services spokesperson William Ntladi on site after the rescue operation was temporarily halted today.
He said they had tried almost everything over the last five days to rescue five-year-old Thole but their mission was fraught with serious challenges, preventing them from going any deeper into the hole.
From mudslides to rockfalls and acidic water; Ntladi said these have been some hurdles they have been battling to overcome, meaning they have been unable to venture more than about halfway deep down the hole believed to be about 140 metres deep.
The operation was halted temporarily to allow mine rescue services personnel, department of minerals and resources officials as well as the family to meet mayor Mzwandile Masina for what Ntladi said was “to pave a way forward”.
Residents of Jerusalem informal settlement outside Boksburg watched earlier on as metro police and EMS personnel barricaded off with barbed wire the hole where the boy had fallen on the grounds of what looked like an illegal dumping side.
This was just moments the boy’s visibly emotional mother accompanied by Ekurhuleni MMC for community safety Vivienne Chauke.
“We have since Saturday been sending cameras down the shaft but they could only go up to 60m. There have also been excavations as we tried going deeper but we had mudslides and rockfalls in between,” Ntladi said.
“Today we had a rockfall at 10.30am, which closed the shaft, and another, similar, incident just after 12pm. We need to find alternative ways of going down.”
Ntladi said they did not know exactly how deep the boy would be. He said challenges that their mission encountered as cited above have forced them to “temporarily suspend their operation pending the way forward that would come out of officials’ meeting with the Mayor [Masina]”
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