Teen rescued after falling 30 feet down a well in rural Virginia, fire officials say
More than a dozen people from multiple fire and rescue crews in Virginia worked in the waning hours of daylight on Sunday, Feb. 27, to rescue a 16-year-old boy who fell 30 feet down a well.
Officials from the Tappahannock-Essex Volunteer Fire Department and Essex County Emergency Medical Services were called to an address on Rose Mount Road in Hustle, Virginia, around 4 p.m., according to a post on the fire department’s Facebook page. Hustle is an unincorporated community about 12 miles from the Potomac River near the Maryland border.
The teen was stuck for nearly three hours, the Tappahannock-Essex Volunteer Fire Department said.
Essex County Fire Chief Paul Richardson told WRIC he had been playing with a friend when he fell through the wooden well top cover.
“He was pretty comfortable being trapped in there for a 16-year-old,” Richardson said, according to the TV station. “He did very well and he was talking to us the whole time.”
First responders from Tappahannock-Essex Fire and Rescue were first to arrive at Rose Mount Road, which is straddled by dense woods and a few fields. According to Chesterfield County EMS, those first responders “took immediate life-saving measures to ensure the victim would not fall further down the well and possibly become submerged.”
Recognizing it was a confined space, they called an urban search and rescue team made up of personnel from Chesterfield County EMS.
VCU Health System also provided a helicopter to take the patient to the hospital once he was rescued, officials said, and Hanover County Technical Rescue was called to engineer a rope system that was used to execute the rescue.
At least 10 confined space rescue technicians from the closest state team, Virginia Task Force 8, were also brought in to help.
“Task Force 8 arrived to reinforce and strengthen the rope and confined space rescue operation already in progress,” Chesterfield County EMS said. “We provided the back-up team, assisted with rigging, and operated the rope rescue system built by Hanover.”
The Tappahannock-Essex Volunteer Fire Department said the 16-year-old was removed from the well and placed on a stretcher at 6:40 p.m. ET. He was reportedly taken to a Richmond hospital with minor injuries.
This story was originally published March 1, 2022 at 6:28 PM with the headline "Teen rescued after falling 30 feet down a well in rural Virginia, fire officials say."
