A 13-year-old Los Angeles boy has survived hours lost in LA's labyrinthine sewer system. Jesse Hernandez fell into the sewer pipe while playing on top of an abandoned maintenance building with friends, CBS News reports.
He was swept away underground and spent 13 hours in the sewer system as fire fighters and sanitation workers aced across the city to find him.
The pipe system Jesse was lost in was in parts barely 121cm wide and at times filled with toxic waste water that travelling 24km/h.
Rescuers described the event as an Easter miracle.
Cameras attached to buoys searched through hundreds of metres of pipe as authorities narrowed down his location.
Eventually they spotted hand marks on the wall where Jesse was trying to get out, and this led them to a three-metre chamber.
As soon as rescuers lifted the hatch on the chamber, they heard Jesse calling for help.
They used the hose to reel him up and gave him a cell phone to call his family, who he was reunited with at the hospital.
There's now an investigation into how Jesse managed to get into the sewer in the first place as a fence had been erected around building he fell from.
Newshub.
