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Man Catapulted Through Sewers in Hellish Hour-and-a-Half Ordeal

“It’s amazing with what that person went through that he survived.”

A Nebraska man spent an hour and a half early Friday being flung through Omaha’s sewer system during a heavy rainstorm, according to the Omaha World-Herald. The 41-year-old man, who has not been named, was at the center of a frantic rescue operation by firefighters, police, and maintenance workers who sought to save him from being hurled into the Missouri River after he was swept into a manhole and swallowed up by the sewers. After being carried about a mile and a half through the city’s underbelly, he finally managed to grab onto a metal grate and shout for firefighters, who cut the grate and extracted him. He was taken to a hospital, though it was not immediately clear what kind of injuries he suffered, if any. “It’s amazing with what that person went through that he survived,” Jim Theiler, assistant City Public Works director, was quoted saying. He and another man had been carrying out pipe cleaning services of the sewers when a torrent of water carried them away; the other man was secured to a safety system so was quickly rescued.