And there are other problems. Sometimes you can see a janitor sweeping garbage into an open manhole, Katsurin said. She doesn t care if people will be working down there. And construction workers heap garbage on the lids, and they are difficult to find in emergency. Floods and snowfalls exacerbate the problem for both drivers and well owners.
Cars drag the lids away, and then the following cars can be severely damaged and the drivers hurt.
It is hard to make open manholes safer. Pavel Goidenko, chief specialist with the water pipe department, said that even when workers erect a fence around the spot, pedestrians and drivers tend to crash through it anyway. In 1993 a truck struck a repair after it ran through a fence around a manhole, and he still suffers serious health problems. Now the well owners put concrete blocks around the spot or ask patrol officers to protect repair workers from danger. Thieves often stole manhole covers and sold them to recycling companies in the early 1990s, the city reported.