Rescue of Jessica McClure

The incident occurred in Midland, Texas, where firemen and police developed a plan to drill a parallel shaft to the well where Jessica was lodged—and drill another horizontal cross-tunnel to rescue her. Enlisting the help of local oil drillers, officials hoped to free McClure quickly. But they then discovered that the well was surrounded by rock. The rescuers' jackhammers were also inadequate, as they were designed for downward rather than horizontal drilling.

A mining engineer eventually arrived to help supervise and coordinate the rescue effort, and a relatively new technology, waterjet cutting, was ultimately used to cut through the rock.[3][4]

Forty-five hours after Jessica fell into the well, the adjacent shaft and cross-tunnel were complete. During the drilling, rescuers could hear Jessica singing "Winnie the Pooh."[5]

A roofing contractor, Ron Short, volunteered to go down the shaft. He had been born without collarbones and could collapse his shoulders to work in tight confines. The team considered his offer,[6][7][8] but paramedic Robert O'Donnell was ultimately able to inch his way into the tunnel, wrestle Jessica free from her position pinned inside the well with one leg above her forehead—and hand her to a fellow paramedic, who carried her up to safety before giving her to another paramedic who carried her to a waiting ambulance.

CNN covered the rescue effort.

Then-President Ronald Reagan said, "Everybody in America became godmothers and godfathers of Jessica while this was going on."

Throughout the incident, local media outlet KMID-TV received calls from news organizations and private individuals globally, seeking the latest information.

In 1988, McClure and her parents appeared on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee to talk about the incident.

A photograph of McClure's rescue by Scott Shaw of the Odessa American received the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography.[9]

ABC made a television movie of the story in 1989, Everybody's Baby: The Rescue of Jessica McClure, starring Beau Bridges and Patty Duke and featuring many participants from the actual rescue as extras.

On May 30, 2007, USA Today ranked McClure number 22 on its list of "25 lives of indelible impact".[10]

President George H. W. Bush meeting McClure at the White House in 1989

Following McClure's rescue on October 16, 1987, doctors feared they would have to amputate Jessica's foot due to damage from loss of blood flow sustained from her leg being elevated above her head for the 58 and a half hours she was stuck in the well. They decided to try hyperbaric therapy in an attempt to avoid full amputation.[11] In the end, surgeons only had to amputate a toe due to gangrene caused by loss of circulation while she was in the well. Jessica carries a scar on her forehead where her head rubbed against the well casing and, despite the incident and 15 subsequent related surgeries, retains no first-hand memory of the events.[12] Her parents divorced in 1990.[13]

Paramedic Robert O'Donnell (August 27, 1957 – April 27, 1995) developed post-traumatic stress disorder after the rescue. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.[13]

In May 2004, McClure graduated from Greenwood High School, in a small community near Midland. On January 28, 2006, she married Daniel Morales at the Church of Christ in Notrees, Texas, about 40 mi (60 km) from Midland. They met at a day care center where she worked with his sister.[14] They have two children, a son born in 2007 and a daughter born in 2009.[15]

When McClure turned 25 on March 26, 2011, she received a trust fund, composed of donations from around the world, which she discussed using for her children's college and which she used to purchase her home, less than 2 mi (3 km) from the well into which she fell.[12] However, she also indicated that a great deal of the fund was lost in the 2008 stock market crash.[16]

• 9-1-1 on Fox The Season 3, Episode 15 titled "Eddie Begins."
• Macgyver (Original series) The Season 4, Episode 3 titled "The Outsiders."
• The Far Side Gary Larson created a comic entitled "The life and times of baby Jessica".
• Malootty, the 1990 Indian Malayalam-language movie starring Jayaram, was based on the incident.[17]
• The Simpsons referenced the incident with an episode about Bart Simpson falling and becoming stuck inside a well.[18]
• In 2010, blues musician Charlie Musselwhite released an album titled The Well. In the title song, he credits McClure's ordeal for inspiring him to quit drinking.[19]
• In 2010, her story was featured satirically in the Saturday Night Live sketch "What Up With That."[20]
• In 2017, an episode of ABC's Modern Family, titled "Heavy Is the Head", Cam (Eric Stonestreet) has great difficulty getting an MRI scan. He later attributes his fear to being stuck in a well as a teenager on the same day as Baby Jessica.[21]

• Floyd Collins, a "man trapped in cave" that received high media attention in 1925
• 2010 Copiapó mining accident, cave-in and miner rescue at a mine in Atacama Region (Chile) where 33 miners were rescued
• Tham Luang cave rescue, where 12 children and a coach were rescued from a cave in Thailand in 2018
• Kathy Fiscus, a 3-year-old American girl who died after falling into a well in 1949
• Alfredo Rampi, a 6-year-old Italian boy who died after falling into a well in 1981
• Julen Roselló, a 2-year-old Spanish toddler who died after falling into a well in 2019
• Rayan Oram, a 5-year-old Moroccan boy who died after falling into a well in 2022
• Tikki Tikki Tembo, a children's book about a Chinese boy who fell into a well

• Tawfiq Nasrallah, Khitam Al Amir (February 5, 2022). "Tragic end to rescue efforts as Moroccan boy Rayan evacuated from the well declared dead". Gulf News.
• "Jessica, from the Well" poem by Lucie Brock-Broido

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