manhole cover takes out car

[low_delta]

Here's one of the weirder stories about the flooding.

Water and air pressure build-up blows off a manhole cover, which totals a woman's minivan.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=760782

The probability of driving over a sewer cover at the exact moment it launches from its hole has to be mighty slim. But then so are the odds of getting 8 or 9 inches of rain in a single weekend like we just did.

It happened to Cheri Kitoman, and it totaled her minivan.

On a trip to the grocery store, she was heading west on College Ave. at 104th St. about 9 p.m. Saturday when she heard a ka-boom. “I thought my car for whatever reason was exploding. All I could think of was for the car to stop moving so I could get out of it,” Kitoman said. The 300-pound manhole cover could not withstand the water and air pressure from the bulging sewer below.

Witnesses told Kitoman the blast lifted up the rear end of the van some five feet in the air. The right rear wheel blew clean off with part of the axle and suspension still attached. The van returned to earth, flipped around facing the opposite direction and wound up on someone’s front lawn. Steam rose from the manhole, and the flying cover came to rest in the street. Kitoman and several witnesses stood guard over the hole so no one would drive or fall into it. Hales Corners police and village workers showed up at the scene.

“Had there not been people there watching it to tell me what happened, I don’t know that I would have believed it myself,” said Kitoman, who lives in Hales Corners and works in accounting at Universal Heating & Cooling.

The round lid covered a 120-foot shaft leading down to a large Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District sewer. The cover has no vent holes, which is done to keep rainwater out of the sanitary sewer.

“The sewer gets so full, the water has to come out somewhere. It’s been happening all over,” meaning the covers flying off, said Bill Graffin, spokesman for the district.

“It’s almost like a pop-gun, or a cork coming out of a champagne bottle,” said Mike Martin, director of public works for Hales Corners.

Kitoman was wearing her seat belt, and both front air bags deployed. She was not hurt except for a few aches and pains. Remarkably, the full tank of gas was untouched, and not a single window on the van was shattered. The underbody is messed up, and the doors don’t close correctly anymore. Her insurance company, Geico, proclaimed the vehicle a total loss and already gave Kitoman a check. For the time being, she’s driving a rental pickup truck.

Kitoman mourns the loss of her van, a 1997 Plymouth Grand Voyager that she purchased new and drove 170,000 miles. She named it Puffy because its first license plate began with PFY.

The story of her own name is even more interesting. When she divorced a few years ago, rather than take her maiden name back she decided instead to honor the memory of her cat, a domesticated African serval named Kito. She often called him “my little Kito man.”

She’s feeling lucky to be alive. Here she tried to be so diligent by making sure the tornado warnings were clear before leaving the house, and watching out for flooded streets.

The threat came from a direction she never expected. From below.

“And I never did make it to the grocery store,” she said.

I can only imagine where that manhole cover would have gone, if there hadn't been a car over it.

Comments

[blonnie.livejournal.com]

that little bit they added about her last name was...... weird. both that they added it and that she did it.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I though that too. Actually, I kinda like it. It sounds like a normal name. Good for her for doing something different.

[raven-nest.livejournal.com]

yeah.. sometimes things happen that are so fine tuned.. that you can't help but think "act of god". Like that lake that drained into the Wisconsin River.

An
Entire
Lake
Gone.. along with a lot of the lakefront houses, and the tourist businesses.. the later do to... you know, lack of LAKE.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/06/11/lake.delton/index.html

[emschin.livejournal.com]

It's like someone pulled the plug on a bathtub and all the water went down the drain. Today they said they wouldn't refill it this year, but probably next.

[raven-nest.livejournal.com]

I wonder who "they" are that decided.. and if the people who make their living off the tourist trade at that lake had a say in it?

*smile*

One of the guys in the original article said "I will survive, but it won't be fun".

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

You can bet they're not doing it by choice. The governor was on the scene right away when it happened saying "we will do everything we can to get the lake back in business." Everyone knows it's one of the centerpieces of our tourism industry. The engineers don't yet know how they're going to block off the flow of water, so they can start filling the breach. And whatever they do has to be built to dam standards, and I don't think that will be a quick thing.

[raven-nest.livejournal.com]

It was a man made lake in the first place, was the "side" that failed part of the man made part.. do you know?

I am sure nothing was built to withstand that much water in such a small amount of time.. it will be interesting to see if they rebuild it so that it can.

I think in Arkansas they are saying it hasn't flooded like this year since 1912. I don't know about the rest of the country.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

No, I don't believe the part where the breach occurred was man-made. The dam was sandbagged, and in fact had water running around it, and they weren't too worried about it. The part that failed was mostly sand. The entire area is either sandstone or sandy soil, and unfortunately, where it breached didn't have too much of the rock.

Up here, the flood of the century was in 1993. As of this weekend, they were saying that as bad as it is, it isn't as bad as 1993, but I think that changed today. This morning's paper said we were only an inch short of the wettest month on record (in Milwaukee), and I'm certain we got more than an inch of rain this afternoon.

[raven-nest.livejournal.com]

We got less than an eight of an inch yesterday when I lost the limb.. and the last time it rained was the third week in May.

I am told this is typical El Nina in the deep southeast... TYPICAL.

sand is difficult, you never know what it is going to do, or when. I live in the part of GA that is all sand.. and most of the unpaved roads here are NASTY. It takes constant maintenance to maintain.. and even then you can't keep up at times.

[emschin.livejournal.com]

I read that article, too, and was surprised at the blurb at the end. They had her picture. She looked normal enough. It really made me think, tho, that she would take her cat's name instead of a husband or father or any other person.