The Strangest Things Found in Drains and Sewers

Blockages in our drains and sewers are, unfortunately, an all too common occurrence. Usually, the culprits are the same old things: accumulations of hardened cooking oils and fats, piles of earth that has dropped through a collapsed drain, and hair.

We’ve also become familiar with the dreaded ‘fatberg’ over recent years, formed of that aforementioned accumulated fat and grease combined with other non-degradable waste that’s been flushed away by thoughtless people, the main offenders usually being wet wipes and nappies.

In 2017, a fatberg weighing 130 tonnes was removed from a sewer in Whitechapel, East London. 93% of it did indeed comprise wet wipes and similar items, but researchers also found condoms, syringes and cocaine within.

But the fatberg is old news when it comes to strange things lurking in our drains and sewers. This month, the team at AA Turner Tankers is taking a look at a few even more unlikely – and considerably less disgusting – discoveries from around the world.

Farm animals

Some small animals, particularly rats, are commonly found in our drains and sewers. As long as they stay there, that’s usually not a huge problem, although tales do exist of rats finding their way up into toilets, which is not something you want to think about.

More surprising is that larger creatures – in the form of domestic farm animals – have also managed to somehow find their way into the sewer system. A sheep was discovered happily wandering around some drains in Surrey – normally a herd animal, on this occasion it was fortunately the only one to have found its way in and came to no harm.

Meanwhile, in Fujian Province in China, one farmer had just about given up after four days of fruitless searching for his missing cow, when its mooing was heard emanating from beneath a manhole cover. It had somehow found its way into the drains – no one knows how it managed to get in, but it needed some heavy winching equipment to get it out again.

Alligators

Urban myths say that in New York, baby alligators used to be popular pets, but when they started to grow and acquire big teeth they ceased to be seen as cute and got flushed down the loo and into the sewers. There, so the story goes, they formed a thriving colony, and the city’s sewers are now home to a mass of alligators, any one of which could at any moment appear in your toilet at a time when you really don’t want a set of sharpened teeth on the loose.

Experts insist that the story is a myth – New York in winter is far too cold for alligators to survive. Nevertheless, in 1935, an eight foot alligator was discovered down a manhole in East Harlem. How it got there is a mystery, but perhaps that’s the source of the later stories.

Meanwhile, alligators in the drains in warmer climates, such as in Florida, are not unheard of, whether as a result of being washed in during heavy rainfall or in pursuit of prey.

Half a mini

After fatbergs twice as long as a football pitch, the size is some way off being the main reason this is such a strange thing to discover in a sewer. Certainly, a car would be odd enough on its own, but half a car? Nevertheless, that is exactly what turned up in a London sewer in 2014 – what happened to the other half remains a mystery.

A rave

Most of the things on this list ended up in the sewers involuntarily – either because they were inanimate objects sent on their way by people who should know better or because they were animals who stumbled in by accident and couldn’t get out again. What you wouldn’t expect is for people to choose to enter the sewers by choice, unless it was in the course of their work.

But in 2017, 200 people chose not just to enter a sewer, but to have a party there. After meeting at a nearby pub in Ouseburn, Newcastle upon Tyne, the revellers clambered through filthy water to a dry spot in the sewer where a sound system had been set up. The party was eventually broken up in the early hours of the morning by the police, who had a more realistic view of the dangers of mixing alcohol with underground tunnels that can become quickly and unexpectedly flooded.

Gold

We’ve all heard of there being gold in “them thar hills”, but gold in “them thar drains” seems a little more unlikely. But there are numerous instances of valuable quantities of gold finding its way into the sewers as a result of diverse manufacturing processes.

Workers at a sewage treatment facility serving one industrial area in Japan have burned the sludge left after treating the sewage and for every ton of the remaining ashes discovered as much as two kilos of gold. Most gold mines don’t enjoy that kind of yield!

Meanwhile, as much as $2 million worth of flakes of gold lost during the manufacture of jewellery and watches in Switzerland are thought to pass through the country’s sewers each year, with a similar amount of silver also being inadvertently discarded.

If you need a drain unblocking, AA Turner Tankers can sort it. Whatever’s down there, our professionals have the latest state-of-the-art equipment such as CCTV drain surveys, the experience – and the stomach – to identify and fix the problem.