Firefighters had to rescue a woman who got stuck down a narrow well after she jumped in because of an argument.
We’re all guilty of doing irrational things when we’re angry, but I don’t think there’s many people out there who would decide to wedge themselves into a small space purely out of frustration.
I suppose everyone has their own way of dealing with stress, and this particular woman apparently wasn’t too concerned about the fact she was trapped in a well, as she was described as being ‘uncooperative’ when it came to her rescue.
You can watch the firefighters save the well-dweller here:
The unnamed woman, from the town of Huangwei in Si County, East China, had been missing for several hours when her family found her three metres (10 feet) down the borehole in the middle of their field. The hole had an opening just 50 centimetres (20 inches) wide.
Family members explained the woman jumped into the well after having an argument with her neighbour, though the thought process behind her decision remains a mystery.
With no means of rescuing her, the woman’s concerned family called the local fire service, who dispatched a vehicle to the scene.
Most people would likely have started to get a bit claustrophobic by this point, but the woman seemingly remained unconcerned as firefighters said she did not wish to be helped out of the well.
Still, the rescuers thankfully acknowledged they couldn’t just leave her there, so they continued their efforts by sending someone head first down the well to try and fasten a rope around the woman’s body.
After three failed attempts, however, the firefighters had to deploy a different tactic. As the woman had become wedged in the hole there was little room left for rescuers to manoeuvre her out, so instead they enlisted an excavator and began digging up the earth around the borehole.
Workers dropped an oxygen tank down the well to ensure the woman would not suffocate in the narrow space while they worked to expose the well, after which they broke it apart piece by piece in order to reach her.
Once the rescue workers began breaking apart the well it only took around 10 minutes for the woman to be rescued. She was taken to hospital for treatment, but luckily suffered no serious injuries as a result of her hasty and extremely misguided response to the argument.
The woman’s story can be a lesson to us all; if you need to cool down after an argument, a well is not the place to do it. Hopefully she, and we, will remember that in future!
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.