‘We’re stuck in the sewer’: FDNY releases 911 call after 5 kids rescued from Staten Island storm drain
STATEN ISLAND (PIX11) -- The FDNY on Wednesday released a recording of a 911 call that details how five children ended up in a storm drain in Staten Island.
The five boys crawled into the storm drain near Martling Avenue and Clove Road around 6 p.m. Tuesday and got lost in the tunnel system, according to FDNY officials. In the 911 recording, dispatchers asked the kids questions to figure out their location.
“What’s the address in Staten Island?” the dispatcher says at the start of the call.
The child on the phone responds, “We don’t know … we’re stuck in the sewer.”
In apparent disbelief, the dispatcher asked again: “You’re stuck where?”
“In the sewer," the boy responds.
The FDNY dispatchers then began to ask the kids questions to figure out where they entered the storm drain so they could send emergency responders to rescue them. The boys described a cemetery and a tunnel entrance near the Staten Island Zoo and Clove Lakes Park.
"It’s like a tunnel where all the pipes are," one of the boys tells the dispatcher.
Later on the call, sirens could be heard in the background and the dispatcher told the boys to yell and scream because the first responders could hear them.
“Help! Help! Help us!" the boys yelled.
The dispatcher told the boys the first responders found the entrance and were walking toward them to get them out.
“We might have hands on the kids right now,” someone on a radio could be heard saying on the 911 call. "We have all five children removed from the sewer. EMS is assessing them as we speak."
All of the kids along with one firefighter were transported to Richmond University Medical Center. No injuries were reported, officials said.