Wendy/Darwin says, "Accepted into the Archive. A little on the gross side, but a perfectly well formed plan to win a Darwin Award...that only barely failed in its objective."

I was working as a civil engineer on the Edinburgh rd network for a council sub-contractor during the scrape and resurface of a large residential street. A large foul drain ran down the street but its exact route was unknown and had to be found as it was belived to be quite shallow and might be damaged by the resurfacing works.

Working in a foul can be dangerous as you can imagine and three men were sent on a very expensive breathing apparatus course and around six thousand pound spent on the appropriate equipment, masks, suits, gas monitors ect.

As supervising engineer I decided to pop along in the afternoon and see how works were commencing. As I approached the site I saw the tent covering the sewer shaking and bulging oddly, I opened the tent to be presented with the three men, lets call them Rob, Bob and Todd wrestling on top of the open manhole covered in......waste matter and Rob and Bob shouting at Todd. I pulled them off the unconcious Todd who was completely drenched in the waste and not breathing. I started CPR but fortunatly he started breathing after I cleared his airway and then vomited a stream of waste. After putting him in the recovery position and calling the ambulance I got the full story from Rob and Bob, the three men, despite being sent on a 2 week course and supplied with expensive new gear, had decided that it would be much easier, as the sewer was so close to the surface, to simply hang one of them upside down with a torch to see where the foul went. Todd, as the loser of an arm wrestling contest, was flipped upside down and lowered in the narrow manhole and was almost immediatly overcome by the gas. With no shout to stop Rob and Bob continued to lower Todd until he was immersed up to his shoulders in the pooling waste, after a minute of so with no response they pulled him up and realised what had happened. They were both fighting to administer CPR, badly, when I entered.

We all had to go to hospital incase of infection and recived a few injections Todd stayed in for treatment and developed a pretty nasty mouth infection, long story short all his teeth fell out.

To top it all Rob, Bob and Todd claimed against the company for injury and trauma as it was not specifically mentioned in the method statement that their shortcut was forbidden or dangerous. The company settled out of court.

Submitted on 10/20/2009

Submitted by: Anonymous
Reference: 5/12/2006

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Bruce said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
It sounds to me like Moe, Larry, and Curly would have been a better set of names to use for these nincompoops. Thanks for a humorous PA!

James said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Yes, the Three Stooges with Scottish accents! A very amusing tale indeed! If the engineering company wasn't thrifty in offering top-notch training to these three bozos, THEY sure were! :-)

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