Here’s something you don’t (and shouldn’t) see everyday: an eight-year-old girl hanging onto a power line, 15 meters above the ground. The incident reportedly took place yesterday evening in the Curug district of Tangerang regency, to the horror of local residents in the area.
A one-minute video captured what had occurred and first made its rounds on Whatsapp, according to reports. The girl, identified by her initial N, can be heard screaming for help to get down.
“Help, I can’t hold on anymore. I want to get down,” N screamed while gripping onto the power line with her hands, with residents below her telling her not to let go.
Meanwhile, some distance away, officers from the state power utility PLN reportedly continued pulling the power line, making it more taut and lifting N even higher off the ground.
Kosrudin, who heads the emergency and logistics department in Tangerang Regency’s Regional Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD Tangerang), confirmed the incident, saying that N was initially playing around the area of a power line installation project, which wasn’t far from her home.
“She didn’t know that the power line was about to be pulled, she was hanging while the cable was still hanging low, but it gradually pulled higher and she didn’t dare let go,” Kosrudin said today, as quoted by Liputan 6.
After a few minutes, local residents brought a mattress to catch her fall and told N to release her grasp. The girl was fortunately caught by a coffee seller who was among those trying to help her, after which she was taken to a nearby hospital for some minor injuries.
Kosrudin blamed the girl’s parents for not keeping an eye on their child, but also the PLN workers at the location.
“The officers pulling [the power line] were from a distance, a few kilometers from the starting point. They thought there were only fields or vacant lots, but it was also a residential area, so there were supposed to be [workers] on the watch every few meters so that no residents could get close [to the project],” he said.
