Indepth Rescuer to save kids trapped in borewells

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

Bhopal, July 15: Here's good news for kids who suffer a fate similar to Haryana's Prince.

Mechanical engineering students of the city's Barkatullah University have come up with a cost-effective device for rescuing children from borewells and narrow ditches.

Mayank Jain, Gaurav Bhargava, Ashish Muchrikar and Ashutosh Shrivastava, all in their early twenties used a heavy doll to test their ''Indepth Rescuer'' whose objective is to save kids from writhing in pain in dark depths.

Prince was among those fortunate ones rescued by digging a parallel hole and perpendicular tunnel but three-year-old Suraj from Jaipur district's Nimad village recently died due to a delay in rescue after he fell into a borewell.

The final year students were supervised by Prof Dinesh Agarwal.

''There was an 80 per cent chance of success in Suraj's case if this device had been used but we could not make the endeavour as it was undergoing further modification at Delhi University,'' Bhargava told the sources, while adding they were also trying to approach the city-based Disaster Management Institute to make the Rescuer more robust.

Prof Agarwal said their project, though successful, was yet to be commercialised. ''However, we could have saved the child if we had the opportunity as we tested the device's strength more than ten times using a heavy doll as victim,'' he added.

''The Rescuer takes hardly two hours while sinking a well by a JCB machine may take 40-45 hours. It costs about Rs 2,000 and is easy to operate,'' claimed Jain.

Without employing heavy machinery, the device can reach where human hands cannot and is more powerful as it is equipped with camera and mike.
The device is mainly made of two cocentric G I sheet cylinders of different diametres so that the smaller one could be placed inside the bigger one, which itself should be pushed inside the borewell. Rubber sheets are glued on the inner surface of the inner cylinder so that it functions like an air jacket which expands inwardly and hold the child tightly without slipping.

To ensure visibility of every activity of child and to make contact with him, a compact camera light and microphone arrangement is also installed. Gear wires are used as holding cables and its length could be varying according to the depth to which they are used.

A cantilever-type base made of iron bars is provided at the inner side of the outer cylinder. Once the inner cylinder is lifted to a certain height, the iron bars welded at one end fall inside like a cantilever.

In a rescue operation, the students explained, initially the cylinders are dropped carefully with the help of holding cables in the bore pipe. When the device reaches the child it starts sliding over the child's body to cover child in the inner cylinder. In the second step. air will be supplied to the rubber air-jacket attached inside the inner cylinder from the compressor on the ground through a pipe. The jacket will start expanding radially inward direction mostly at the bottom and start gripping the child.

Air-jacket will not grip the victim's chest and head. While continuing oxygen supply, contact will be made with the child through microphone and camera monitoring.

In the third step, people standing at ground level will start pulling up the inner cylinder slowly while the outer cylinder will be stationary. When the inner cylinder is pulled up, four iron bars bolted and hinged inside the outer cylinder will become free and form a cross section and base to the child.

Once it is confirmed that iron bars provide support to the child the air-jacket is deflated to give space to child to adjust. Then both cylinders are pulled up with the child in it.

''Though the device is considered robust enough but has constraints as it could not work if the child fell with its head downward but efforts are on to overcome this lacunae'', said the enthusiastic inventors.

UNI

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