Video

On April 9, 1949, in San Marino, California, three-year-old Kathy Fiscus was playing in a field overgrown with weeds when she fell 90 feet down a 14-inch-wide abandoned well. Her parents heard her crying, and within an hour police and firemen arrived and began summoning well diggers and other heavy equipment to dig a parallel shaft from which Kathy could be rescued. Hearing about the rescue effort over the radio, other volunteers showed up: workers, engineers, and various diminutive people who offered to be lowered down the pipe. Soon, unfamiliar trucks carrying live television equipment arrived and began broadcasting from the rescue sight. There were only about 20,000 television sets in Los Angeles County at the time, and this was one of the first spontaneous news stories to receive live television coverage. People crowded around television sets in neighbors' homes and bars across the country, and of the 50 hours spent attempting to rescue Kathy, more than 27 hours were broadcast live on Los Angeles television. On April 11, rescuers succeeded in reaching Kathy through a parallel well but it was too late: The little girl was dead. Laws were subsequently passed in California and other states requiring that abandoned wells be filled in, but in 1987 history repeated itself when 18-month-old Jessica McClure plunged down a shaft in Texas. The attempt to rescue Jessica received international television coverage, and fortunately she was brought up alive after 58 hours.