Passers-by on a busy London road witnessed an incredible moment last week when a man was pulled out of a sewage hole where he had been trapped for the past three days. As soon as the dishevelled 48-year-old clambered out of the drain, he looked around at his audience and uttered his first words, “Does anyone have a cigarette?”
72 Hours Underground
The London police trying to rescue the man who had fallen into the manhole
Trapped underground for almost 72 hours, one man had been stumbling through the dirty pipelines after falling down the drain until people finally heard his desperate cries emerging from the manhole deep under. The incident occurred in Romford, a town in east London and many on-lookers gathered around to capture the bizarre rescue scene on their phone cameras. Later, the video went viral on the internet as several news agencies tried to contact the victim to get details on the story.
The unfortunate man had fallen into the manhole on February 5 and after failing to get out, he decided to walk down the dark sewage tunnel for almost 6 miles until he finally found an opening where he could see people passing by. On the third day, someone paid attention to the dark silhouette of a man inside the drain, screaming for help, and called 911.
A Mucky Rescue Mission
Police officers at the scene trying to pull out the trapped man
The police officers arrived at the scene and pulled the heavy cover off the manhole to begin the rescue mission. Although the witnesses heard the man explaining to the police that he had been stuck inside the sewage system for almost three days, it isn’t clear how he got there in the first place.
After a rather difficult rescue mission, the police officials were able to pull the man out only to reveal that he hadn’t been wearing any shoes. He was immediately rushed to the hospital where he received treatment for injuries he sustained due to exposure to cold weather. But before being carried off by the ambulance, the man had reportedly looked at the people around him and asked if anyone had a smoke. The witnesses suddenly breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing the man utter his first words, knowing that he was alright.
One of the on-lookers said that he had never witnessed an incident so bizarre in his life and it had made him scared of falling into a manhole himself. The man was completely covered in filth and the police officers who helped him out of the drain had to take a trip to a nearby restroom to clean themselves up.
A Scene from a Horror Film
Sam, who worked in a restaurant nearby said that the staff had be hearing muffled cries for two days after which they decided to search the area and see where they were coming from. All they could hear was a man crying ‘help’ but he didn’t say that he was in a drain. After searching around fruitlessly, the staff went back to work. In a matter of hours, two police cars showed up at the restaurant asking if they could wash their hands after handling a mucky rescue in Romford. After hearing the story, Sam was shocked that the cries of help had been coming from underneath the ground the entire time.
Romford’s Lorraine Moss said that the sight of a man stuck inside a drain caught her eye as she was on her way to work. At first, she assumed the worst and thought that someone has died inside the sewage pipe, but upon closer inspection, she saw that the man, covered in filth, was still alive and crying for help. Lorraine quickly called others for help and it took a few strong men to lift the lid off the drain.
The rescued man looked weak and bewildered as if he didn’t know where he was or how he got there. One of the witnesses even said that the scene reminded him of the horror novel IT by Stephen King and for an instance he thought that the man who had just emerged from the drain was an alien.
