Toddler rescued after falling down pipe near Kansas home

Emergency crews have rescued a terrified and screaming toddler after he fell into a narrow pipe and got stuck around a dozen feet (about 3.7 metres) below ground in the yard of his Kansas home.

“There we go,” Officer Ronnie Wagner of the Moundridge Police Department can be heard saying on body camera video, clearly relieved, as crews pulled the uninjured 14-month-old boy from the hole Sunday. “All right.”

Wagner had arrived at the home just 15 minutes earlier. The toddler was sobbing as his father yelled into the hole, “Hey buddy. We are going to get you up.”

Wagner explained in a phone interview Thursday that the boy was playing in the yard when he stepped on a lid covering the hole. It came off and he tumbled down as his mother watched.

At the scene, she clutched a younger baby in her arms, as the boy’s father comforted her and the screaming toddler’s older brother.

But those screams were encouraging — showing he was conscious — as was the fact that the boy could stand up, Wagner said.

Initially, he resisted the rescue crew’s efforts to loop a rope around him so they could pull him out.

“He took it off of him because he wasn’t sure what was going on,” Wagner said, explaining that the toddler was “in distress and panicked and rightfully so.”

Next up, they tried a PVC pipe, with an L-shaped bend on the end, hoping to loop it under the child. But when that didn’t work, Wagner transformed the pipe into the type of catch pole that typically is used to snare wildlife.

“We call him MacGyver,” Police Chief Jared Kaufman said, comparing Wagner to the eponymous hero of the 1980s TV show who had a propensity for unconventional hacks.

Wagner brushed off the compliment, saying it was the first he had heard of the moniker. He also insisted it took an entire crew to rescue the boy. The assistant fire chief was the one to reach into the hole and grab the toddler, while the EMS director manipulated the pipe.

Moments after the toddler emerged from the hole, medics began checking him out, as his mother uttered, “Momma is here.”

When Wagner peaked into the ambulance minutes later to check on the boy, he was snuggled into her arms. “Loving his mom up,” explained Wagner, himself the father of two.

Wagner said the boy may have a few bruises but didn’t even require a trip to the hospital. Wagner suspects he slowed his descent as he fell by flailing his arms.

No one is certain of the purpose of the pipe but suspect it may have been connected to a sump pump at one point, used to divert excess rainwater way from the house.

“It was pretty wild,” Wagner said.

Moundridge, a town of about 2,000, is about 40 miles (64 kilometres) north of Wichita.