Split second perfect timing saved a woman and two small children from serious injury. Surveillance video captured the moment a manhole spontaneously came blasting up out of the sidewalk.
A lucky woman
Initial reports aren’t naming the lucky woman who narrowly escaped serious injury or death on Monday, April 21. She was out taking her kids for a stroll without the slightest clue of imminent danger.
While it’s rare, manholes do occasionally explode. This one, in Poughkeepsie, New York, could have been much worse.
Video making the viral rounds of social media “shows the woman holding on to one child’s hand while she pushes the other in a stroller around 1:30 p.m.”
Reports note that the incident happened along Academy Street between Church and Cannon streets. Local residents are going to be tiptoeing around the manholes for a while.
Split second timing was the crucial difference between a nasty surprise and catastrophe. The woman is only a few steps beyond the lip of the ensuing crater as “the manhole suddenly bursts and ruptures the cement.”
That sent them running but if she had been walking just a touch slower it would have sent the stroller airborne along with “large pieces of debris” which went “flying into the air.”
High carbon monoxide
Several other village residents had good fortune looking over them as well. “The video also shows several cars parked on the street and in a neighboring lot, but they do not appear to be damaged.”
After the woman reported the incident, she learned that it wasn’t the only one that day.
Poughkeepsie Fire Department posted a report about it on their social media page. Not only did the woman avoid being blown up, the family wasn’t poisoned, either.
It turns out they were forced to evacuate the entire city block after finding “high levels of carbon monoxide.” That’s a deadly and invisible gas. Officials also explained that it wasn’t the only manhole to explode in the general vicinity.
“A manhole halfway down the block as well as another on the corner of Academy and Church Streets had also exploded.”
They didn’t say a whole lot other than that’s the one that narrowly missed the woman and her kids. “Thankfully no injuries were reported,” the department relates.
