PHOTO: The hunt is on for a Nashua NH teen believed to have gone down the drain during a flashflood this weekend.
At one point during Friday's relentless downpours, rain was falling on drought stricken New Hampshire at the rate of three inches per hour, activating a succession of dangerous surges and emergency alerts.
That much fast-flowing water also caused some cities' storm-drainage systems to become so overwhelmed so quickly that metal sewer covers started "popping off."
Today, a missing storm cap is what Nashua police think led to the sudden disappearance of Jacob Goulet as he was walking home late Friday night from a friend's place.
Several agencies are now actively searching Nashua's waterways for the 16-year-old, who was officially listed as missing on Saturday morning when he didn't make it home as expected.
Goulet was already thought to have gone down the drain the night before when someone called 911 to report that possibility just before 10 p.m. -- the same hour the youth was seen passing through the neighborhood on foot.
Though the caller hadn't actually witnessed him being sucked into the drainage hole, a number of personal items later found near the drain's opening were identified as belonging to the still-missing teenager.
New Hampshire's Public Radio station is reporting at this hour that teams are probing both the Nashua River and the Merrimack River for Jacob Goulet's body, while officials continue to monitor the city's flooded storm system as well.
Goulet stands 5-foot-8-inches tall and weighs approximately 200 pounds. He has black hair shaven into a mohawk and was wearing a studded denim vest, gray shirt, dark shorts and black sneakers when he vanished.
Anyone who knows of his current whereabouts or who comes across his remains is asked to call the Nashua Police Department immediately at 603-594-3500.
Eponymous Rox
Afternoon Update: Police have searched at least a 1000-plus feet of Nashua NH's underground sewage system so far. Yet they still haven't found a missing teen believed to have been swept into those roiling waters during Friday night's epic rainstorm.
ReplyDeleteJacob Goulet, 16, was walking homeward that evening when he apparently fell or was drawn into a drain uncovered by raging waters at an overflow "interceptor."
A police source says water specialists have been called to an area near Tyngsboro New Hampshire now on reports by a Massachusetts chopper crew of "a body" in the Merrimack River, but the sighting hasn't been verified.
Nashua New Hampshire is only a stone's throw from the Massachusetts border, so both states are joining forces in trying to locate the missing teenager, dead or alive.
Officials are cautioning, however, that, despite the above unconfirmed sighting, Nashua's storm-drainage system "does not" usually empty into the Merrimack, except for "overflows" during major storm events.
In the meantime, a private contractor secured by the Waste Water Management department is installing cameras throughout the city's network of underground pipelines. Ostensibly because this is where the victim's body would "most likely" be snagged.
The family of missing teen Jacob Goulet is resorting to less sophisticated search-and-rescue techniques: They're literally yelling into every open manhole they come across, in hopes that he may be still down there clinging for his life "but unable to answer" them.
“I just hope that maybe he might have fallen in and he’s just hanging on, and maybe he’s too cold to yell," said one worried but optimistic relative.
The Nashua Fire Department and dive team, together with the city of Nashua Waste Water Department, the Division of Public Works, the New Hampshire State Police, the Massachusetts State Police, and New Hampshire's Fish and Game agency are all working to bring this young man home again, hopefully alive.
E.R.
From email update @ 5:55 PM from 'Timothy Matthews' facebook: "Body Found - Massachusetts State Police discovered a body believed to be Goulet's in the Merrimack River in Massachusetts. Further tests are being initiated to confirm it, but police are confident that it is Goulet."
ReplyDeleteE.R.
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E.R.