TRAVIS, N.Y. (WABC) — A teenager is recovering after falling several feet into an open manhole. She was texting and walking when it happened.
“I fell in a hole,” Alexa Longueira said. The Travis resident laughs about it now, but when the accident happened, it was a shock. She was walking along Victory Boulevard about to read a text message on her girlfriend’s cell phone when the sidewalk was suddenly gone. “Like, there was no warning about a big, open hole,” she said.
It was a big, open manhole. Alexa tumbled six feet underground and landed in four inches of raw sewage. “A manhole. My kid falls down a manhole,” Kim Longueira, said. In a word, Alexa’s mother says it was horrible. “She was smelly,” she said.
Alexa also had cuts across her arms and down her back. They know it could have been worse if the sewer had been full or if Alexa had hit her head.
Workers on the scene told kim they had left the manhole unattended in order to get cones to mark it off. “DEP is conducting a full investigation of what happened during a manhole incident on Victory Blvd. where workers were flushing a high-pressure sewer on Wednesday evening. We regret that this happened and wish the young woman a speedy recovery,” said DEP spokesperson Mercedes Padilla.
Meep Meep… Har!
A couple of weeks ago I saw a skateboarder going down a fairly steep grade on a very busy city street …. texting!
Amazing.
I dont need to say …
Confucius Say: Girl Who Fall Into Sewage Manhole While Texting In Deep Schitt.
The good news is that the four blind people walking in front of her were able to easily detect and avoid the hole.
The girl asked rescuers to wait a few seconds until she finished tweeting about the ordeal from the bottom of the hole.
#4 Jägermeister — glad you had the link because I wouldn’t have believed a description of that clip 😉
If you can’t see an open man hole will you notice cones until you actually walk into them?
Humans, myself included, are not very intelligent nor wise. We can fake it sometimes but only to people that don’t really know us.
Wadda want to bet that by the end of next week she will have filed a lawsuit against the city?
The Darwin awards were knocking. I hope she realizes this.
And yet the guys who had temporarily left the open manhole to go get signs and cones for it will probably have to carry the can for this, instead of the stupid braindead idiot that fell down it!
It’s not all the kids fault. I would be pretty pissed to come across an unattended open manhole on a sidewalk. As well as adults kids to stupid things. None the less it must of been a hell of a ride and landing.
#9, the supervisor of the workers is at fault. If only those twits had thought to leave one person behind to guard the hole….
The girl was careless, the workers were negligent.
#10 & #11, True, it wasn’t ONLY the idiot kid’s fault, but it was MOSTLY her fault.
If she wasn’t even bright enough to spot a gaping hole then what makes you guys think that trafic cones would have made any difference at all? And she no doubt had an iPod blaring away at top volume in her stupid thick ears so anyone who was left to guard the hole wouldn’t have been able to warn her anyway.
The workers didn’t think they might need the cones before they opened the hole? They should be fired.
Hole-y crap?
Slow news day ?
This will result in a law banning texting while walking.
#12
No, it’s entirely her fault. No one can do much more for those people, like this girl, to save their dumba**. Kinda like the old joke about having 101 of something because 100 isn’t enough…as though 1 more would help anything 🙂 Futurama, “lets conservate”
In other news, I drank water. (very serious news)
Oh less i forget, my dog also drank water.
What is up with the States it should be totally her fault. What ever happened to personal responsibility, but in true US fashion its never MY fault. If she cross the road and was hit by a car she would sue GM ??
#12, Zybch, and some others,
You make several conclusions of why it must be her fault. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to back them up.
If she wasn’t even bright enough to spot a gaping hole then what makes you guys think that trafic (sic) cones would have made any difference at all?
She was using her peripheral vision to navigate with. She had no reasonable expectation of there being a hole that was not there the last time she walked down that sidewalk. The sewer cover was round and dark. Very similar to the shape and color of the hole. Apparently there was no activity around this large round dark thing to alert her of any problem.
The city erred by not blocking the hole. While a cone might have been noticed, for safety, a barricade should have been used. Even better, the cover should not have been opened until they were ready to proceed.
The talk here seems mixed about who to assign blame to
I wonder if this will affect the poor girl’s career choices
Maybe the whole event and the attention to septic tanks et al will be so great that with the limelight and the fame she will enter a field of recovering lost jewelry and valuables from septic tanks
#19, Brad,
What ever happened to personal responsibility
Personal responsibility does not include the right to have all the corporate responsibilities dumped on the person.
The city has an obligation to protect the public from its actions. Another scenario might be what if some seven y/o kids were playing tag and one slipped and fell in? Or an elderly person with glaucoma that can barely see light and dark came by?
If she cross the road and was hit by a car she would sue GM ??
If she was hit by a car that couldn’t stop or avoid her due to a known manufacturing defect then probably she could.
Imagine two societies. In DumbASS USA, if you walk in public without paying attention and fall in an open manhole, you can recover money from the State for our collective negligence. What does this lead to?===More people not paying attention, people getting hurt, society paying for these retards.
Now, in Reasonable USA, if you walk in public not paying attention and fall in an open manhole, you cannot recover money from the State because it was mostly your own personal fault. This leads to city crews not putting out cones when they should and more people getting hurt–but it remains mostly their fault. Now, being “Reasonable” the state has universal healthcare and the injured person is thankful for getting help at the local hospital. In their own interest, they try to pay more attention next time.
TEST: In 20 words or less, how does Real USA fall in its own manhole cover?
This is an excellent metaphor for the whole country. We’re all down a shit hole, and most of us didn’t see it coming. Let’s call her situation performance art and send the kid a new iphone.
RTaylor… LOL! So true.
#24, RT,
I like it.
🙂
Just a thought: after we fire the incompetent worker and the incompetent supervisor, who do we get to fix sewer pipes?
If you ever wondered why you see 9 city workers standing around while the 10th guy digs a hole, it’s because of morans who can’t walk and look in the same direction.
#24 – agreed, and what are we doing to get out of the hole? A: dig some more!!
#27, chuck,
After they are fired the city could hire some people smart enough to erect barricades around open man holes.
#24 – RTaylor
Nice observation.
I actually did the same thing, although I was reading my mail on my phone when I did it. This was in Austin, Texas though. I fell about 4 feet down, banged up my shin on the way. Inside the manhole was a gas meter, not crap, thankfully.