‘We heard screaming’: Father speaks out after daughter fell in wooden manhole

After a fun-filled day of cycling, the sisters jumped off their bicycles and were making their way back to the parking lot on foot when the younger of the two, who was walking on the bunny hill alongside her sister, stepped on a wooden manhole and fell through.

“My elder daughter came running and we just ran up the hill,” he said of the incident which happened around 8 p.m.

“It was so dark in there because everything else is covered up with those rotten planks and we didn’t see any padlocks on it.”

A three-year-old lies in the emergency room after falling in a manhole. (Aby Felix/Facebook)

The girl fell five feet but because she too had been riding her own bike, she had been wearing her helmet, knee and elbow pads.

“Her head was all right, we hope, like we think nothing hit her, her knees elbows are all good,” he said.

“I just pulled her out. It was hard,” added Felix referring to the depth.

According to the City of North Battleford, they were made aware of the incident over the weekend and staff fixed the issue immediately. They also encourage residents to report any concerns they have with parks, facilities and roadways to the online service request system.

As Felix worked to get his youngest out of the hole, a Good Samaritan came over to help.

“We couldn’t see anything, as soon as we pulled her up, then we saw blood from the side of her body,” he said.

His wife, who is a nurse, lifted her shirt and discovered that one of the planks had punctured the girl under her arm.

“It was pretty deep,” he said.

From there, they took the little girl to the Battlefords Union Hospital and the doctor saw her immediately.

“They had to put her under sedation and had to do a procedure to stitch it up,” said Felix. “[She] had four or five stitches.”

While the girl is fully up to date with her vaccines, the family was asking about population health.

The inside of the manhole. (Aby Felix/Facebook)

“Inside that, it was like, you never know what’s in there, it’s all rotten and stuff and you can see iron pipes,” said Felix.

Before leaving for the hospital, the father said he tried to put the lid back but thought better of it.

“If I set it back, it would be like setting a trap for the next person because it won’t stay there,” he said, adding he set it next to the hole instead.

Meanwhile, his daughter came home Sunday morning and is expected to take a couple of weeks to recover. Felix and his family are grateful she was wearing her protective gear.

“Oh, my goodness, if she didn’t have that helmet on her, this would be much worse,” he said.

Reflecting back, he said it could have happened to anyone including an elderly person and he didn’t know why the rotting wood structure was there on the ground. Felix hopes this leads to inspections being done on all the properties around the city that children have access to.

“When you’re tall, you could maybe see it but from like a two-year-old or three-year-old perspective, you can’t see that it’s there because its right on the grass.”

In the meantime, the toddler is being monitored and is being given pain medication.

“She’s too young to remember that she’s injured, so she lifts her arm up,” he said.

“She remembers right away, and she cries.”

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julia.lovettsquires@pattisonmedia.com

On BlueSky: juleslovett.bsky.social

by Julia Lovett-Squires

‘We heard screaming’: Father speaks out after daughter fell in wooden manhole

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