Strange Occurrence

I was sitting at home last night watching TV. I heard a loud noise outside. It was a pretty loud boom followed by a thud.

It a first reminded me of someone shooting off fireworks. Then I thought it reminded me more of when I was growing up and kids would shoot off M-80s around the 4th of July. Then I thought maybe it was some sort of a car accident.

I opened my front door and looked up the street. Nothing seemed to be wrong in that direction. Then I looked the other direction. There's a manhole not too far from my house. There was smoke coming out of the hole. A large cloud of white smoke. The manhole cover was off to the side. That is to say no longer covering the manhole. There had been an explosion in the manhole and the cover had been blown off. As I said there was a loud noise and then a thud. The thud was the manhole cover landing on the street.

It took a little while for it to register that that was indeed what had happened. (This is not as rare as it might sound. This has happened several times in Georgetown only flames shoot out of the manhole as opposed to smoke, the covers are blown like 10 feet into the air and this happens in the middle of the day.) I thought maybe I should get a little closer and see what happened. I quickly thought better of that. After a minute or so I decided to call 911.

I reached them and explained the situation. They said someone would be out shortly. I wasn't sure at first who would exactly show up. However, about 10 minutes later, a firetruck showed up. They used their truck to block off the intersection where the manhole was. It is maybe 15 feet from an intersection. They stayed around for awhile until a utility truck from the electric company showed up.

I'm not sure how long they were out there because I went to bed. Around 10 am this morning another utility truck showed up and they're still out there working.

And that was my strange Friday night occurrence.