The Peculiar Truth about Baby Jessica in the Well

• October 14, 1987: An emergency phone call went out to local police and firefighters in Midland, Texas. An infant child had fallen far down a long-neglected open water well in her aunt’s backyard. The girl was trapped inside.

• The rescue efforts, which were eventually captured live on cable television, captivated the nation and triggered a new level of news reporting.

• Jessica McClure, or Baby Jessica as she came to be known, was just 18 months old. Her aunt Jamie ran a daycare center out of her home. Jessica’s mother, Cissy, monitored her daughter and four other children as they played in the yard. Then Cissy went inside the house to take a phone call. When she came out, the children were in distress. Jessica was nowhere to be found. That was when Cissy discovered that her baby had fallen down the open water shaft. She raced back inside the house to call for help.

• Police and firefighters arrived promptly, but they’d never had to deal with the situation before. The uncapped well was only eight inches in diameter, which was too narrow for any adult. Also, Jessica was stranded 22 feet below the surface, roughly two stories down. Rescue crews weren’t quite sure what to do.

• Midland, Texas had long been known for its wells, although most of them produced oil. The city was established only 106 years earlier as a railroad stop between El Paso and Dallas. Ranchers owned the surrounding flatland, which was mostly barren. Then oil was struck in 1923, and that changed everything.

• The region saw many booms and busts. The 1970s were a boom time; the 80s were not. In 1986, oil prices plummeted. Jobs were lost and foreclosures began. Baby Jessica’s plight was a kind of metaphor for Midland’s hard times.

• CNN had only been on the air for seven years, but the 24-hour TV news service was better poised to report on the story than any other source. The major networks had regularly scheduled programs and advertising; CNN could and did stay live on the scene around the clock. As a result, viewers were glued to their screens to watch updates on the rescue of Baby Jessica. The story gained global attention.

• The police and firemen had no experience with wells, but local oil crews did. They proposed carefully drilling a wider shaft parallel to the well Jessica was inside. Once they dug down a few feet below her position, they would then drill a perpendicular hole into the shaft to remove the child. The plan wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

• Rescuers could hear Jessica’s cries and moans, so they knew she was alive, although they couldn’t determine the extent of any injuries. They talked to her and listened as she sang nursery rhymes and “Winnie the Pooh.” Oxygen was pumped down the shaft.

• Drilling proved problematic. The ground was severely dried, hard, and filled with stones. When they finally got down thirty feet, the jackhammers used to cut the horizontal hole were insufficient. The endeavor was taking longer than anyone planned.

• Two days passed. CNN ran continuous coverage. In truth, though, there wasn’t much to see. All of the action took place below ground. Even so, millions of viewers watched with heartache and prayers.

• When the parallel hole was finally completed, paramedic Robert O’Donnell descended into the shaft. He discovered that one of Jessica’s legs was raised above her head. He had to carefully pull her down into the new tunnel and then handed her off to another medical technician.

• On the night of October 16 - after 58 hours trapped in the well - Baby Jessica was finally freed.

• The girl had to endure multiple surgeries in the years to come as well as the amputation of a toe. She also grew up with recurring arthritis.

• The event was such a cultural touchstone that mentions of Baby Jessica became comedy fodder for years thereafter.

• Today Jessica is a married mother of two, and she still resides in Texas.

• By the time of the infamous OJ Simpson murder trial in 1995, CNN was well established as a prime source of live news.

• Thanks to fracking, Midland is experiencing another oil boom.