Five years after he miraculously survived being swept into a stormwater drain pipe during the 2012 floods in Duluth, Kenith Markiewicz is alive and more than well, his mother, Amber, reported.
Her son plays football and is a Boy Scout, and though he doesn't talk much about the day he nearly drowned in floodwaters, he's retained a healthy caution around open bodies of water, Amber Markiewicz said.
"He still has a fear of water," she said, speaking from their home in Louisiana. "If he can't see through it, he's not going into it."
Record-setting rains on June 19 and 20 in 2012 caused some $100 million in damage to Duluth roads, parks, trails and bridges. Streets buckled. Cars were swallowed by sinkholes. The state Department of Natural Resources was forced to close Jay Cooke State Park indefinitely due to the flood damage. Floodwaters even overwhelmed the Lake Superior Zoo, drowning some animals and setting others free.
A photograph of Feisty the seal, who belly-flopped onto a nearby residential street as floodwaters receded, went viral on social media and made it clear that the storm was not at all normal.
Amber and Kenith, then 8, were visiting relatives in Duluth at the time, and after the rains stopped he went out to play in the neighborhood. A block from the home they were staying in, Kenith was playing with his 10-year-old cousin when he stepped into a pool of muddy brown water and disappeared.
Rainwater had overwhelmed a 24-inch culvert, and though the water looked calm on the surface, a powerful jet was streaming into the pipe opening and a network of stormwater drains. Kenith traveled six to eight blocks underground before he was dumped in a wooded area. A stranger, Gordon Marshall, found him there and called police.
Kenith survived with minor cuts and after a brief stay at the hospital, returned home. His story made headlines around the world, and he and his mother appeared on national television.
