13-year-old rescued after spending 12 hours inside sewer

A 13 -year -old boy has been rescued after spending 12 hours trapped in a maze of sewer tunnels in Los Angeles .
“ I was just praying to God to help me and to not die, ” Jesse Hernandez told NBC News . “ You could just hear the water running through. You couldn ’t see anything . ”
Jesse was on an Easter Sunday outing with his family at Griffith Park , one of the largest urban parks in the United States, when he and his cousins went to explore an abandoned building, the Los Angeles Times reported .
The boys were jumping on wooden boards when a plank broke, sending Jesse plunging 25 feet ( eight meters ) down a sewer pipe around 4 : 30 pm , the newspaper said.
A massive rescue effort was launched involving more than 100 firefighters , police and sanitation workers .
At 4 : 00 am Monday morning , sanitation workers lifted up a manhole cover and found Jesse looking up at them , the Times said.
He had traveled about two -thirds of a mile ( over one kilometer ) from where he fell into the sewer .
“ This young man rose like Jesus,” Bryant Jones , a city sanitation manager , was quoted as saying by the Times .
Jesse was taken to hospital , decontaminated and released .