Little Girl Dangling by Head Four Stories Off Ground Rescued by Daring Fireman

By Amanda Thomason July 27, 2019 at 9:48am

Kids spend a lot of their early years figuring out boundaries in the world around them. House rules, laws of gravity, unspoken expectations — they challenge everything.

You can tell them not to touch the stovetop because it’s hot, but no matter how often you tell them, they will probably still find it necessary to run their own tests. Sometimes a burned finger is much more convincing data than mom’s word.

We were all kids once. You can probably remember some of the more intense situations you’ve gotten stuck in.

Head stuck in a staircase railing? Sitting in a bucket and getting stuck? Getting your clothing snagged on something?

Many times these incidents are more amusing than dangerous, and just require some adult common sense to extrapolate the child in question and set things right.

For one little girl in China, though, the situation was far from humorous. It started as many accidents start out: Mom went out for a bit, and the girl was left to her own devices.

Somehow, the 5-year-old managed to climb out the window and then slipped through the grate, according to a video circulated by LADbible.

Thankfully there was even a covering on the window, probably used to deter would-be thieves, otherwise this story could have ended much differently.

After the girl was spotted dangling by her head on the fourth floor on the apartment in Ganzhou Shi, firefighters came to the rescue.

One firefighter was lowered from the top of the building until he was able to reach the girl, brace himself on the grating of the unit below and support her so the pressure would no longer be put on her small frame.

In many cases like this, the easiest way to remedy the situation is to push the child’s body back through the opening, as the head is the bulkiest part and it’s easier to wiggle the relatively flat shoulders and hips back through a lengthwise gap.

In this instance, authorities chose to cut the bars to free the girl, a process which understandably terrified the 5-year-old even more.

It isn’t the first time this particular type of disaster has taken place, and it probably won’t be the last. A 3-year-old was found dangling from a fourth-story grate in 2013, and a 2-year-old found himself in a similar predicament in 2018.

Thankfully, all three children were rescued — but these cases are a stark reminder that kids are curious, and while they’re learning that actions have consequences, it’s up to the adults in their lives to keep a close eye on them.

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