An 8-year-old boy survived a six-story fall down a trash chute Wednesday with only cuts to show for the frightening turn of events.
Dan Kaetsu, 29, a Red Hill Elementary School counselor who lives on the eighth floor of Salt Lake Manor, 2977 Ala Ilima St., said the child’s 13-year-old aunt ran up to him and asked for help.
The boy apparently went down head-first into the chute from the eighth floor, where he lives, and landed in trash that had piled up to the second floor, Kaetsu said.
He had a laceration on the top of his head, was bleeding down his forehead, received cuts to his arm and feet, and likely hurt his hands, Kaetsu said.
Kaetsu said when he looked down the chute, "I could hear him screaming he can’t breathe," and his aunt was "freaking out" and yelling down to him, "Can you breathe?"
So Kaetsu quickly broke the glass fire hose box and sent one end of the hose down the chute.
"Once he said he had it, I pulled him up," said Kaetsu, who managed to bring him all the way up to the eighth floor.
Kaetsu said the child was having trouble, kept slipping, and that he could feel the slack in the hose at times.
"So I told him to wedge his feet and hands against the wall so he could keep his grip and he could start to walk up when he got closer to the top," Kaetsu said.
The aunt told him the boy had taken out the trash, so she went out to check on him and heard his cries for help. It was unclear how he wound up in the chute.
When the boy came up, "he was just crying," said Kaetsu.
The child is a student at a Pearl Harbor elementary school, Kaetsu said.
He said firefighters arrived just as he got the boy out.
Honolulu Fire Department Capt. David Jenkins said firefighters arrived at 10:36 a.m., stabilized the boy and treated him for his injuries.
Emergency Medical Services transported him to a hospital.
Jenkins said the building had multiple city fire code violations at its Sept. 12 inspection. HFD found then that the eighth-floor trash chute was not compliant with the fire code for failure to shut and latch.
The chute door was supposed to spring back, shut and latch, which is a way to prevent fire from spreading to other floors, but is not intended to prevent a fall into the chute, Jenkins said.
