Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 26, 1990 TAG: 9006260329
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Either way, an unidentified boy kept Roanoke County fire and rescue workers busy for about two hours Monday afternoon searching the storm-drain system under Brambleton Avenue.
A boy apparently lifted the manhole cover outside Brambleton Family Physicians, climbed down, explored the storm drains for awhile and then popped up through another manhole a few hundred feet away.
Meanwhile, a passerby who spotted the boy enter the sewers called police around 2 p.m. She had been riding down Brambleton with her 5-year-old son.
" `I've got one here who would kind of like to do the same thing. I figured I better tell somebody,' " Deputy Dave Byrd said the woman told police.
Some 20 fire and rescue workers were dispatched. That included two firefighters who entered the sewers wearing breathing apparatus.
They searched and found nothing - no boy, no Ninja Turtles.
Another witness then reported that he saw a boy push open a manhole cover and climb up from the sewers about 4 p.m. outside Perdue Cabinets, just down the road.
He said the boy appeared to be about 12 years old.
"He was down there probably playing, being a kid," said Mark Light, a battalion chief for the Roanoke County Fire and Rescue Department.
Light said calls for kids lost in storm drains come in occasionally, but not often.
"They like to explore them. I guess one of the rites of childhood is playing in the storm sewers," he said.
But he said rescue workers take the calls seriously.
In the Cave Spring Corners area, where the boy went underground Monday, many of the drainage pipes are 48 inches in diameter.
During a heavy rain, the amount of water and its force running through those lines can be deadly.
"A quick downpour like we had last Friday would have drowned him," Light said.
by CNB