Two drown looking for flushed jewelry in Durban sewers

17 December 2015 - 16:03 By Jeff Wicks
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Sewer pipe
Sewer pipe
Image: www.water-technology.net/projects/

Police Search and Rescue divers faced the grim task of fishing two bodies out of the pipe system of a Durban sewerage plant, after the men drowned while diving for lost jewellery on Wednesday.

A third man had survived, and had managed to escape the effluence tunnels near the Clairwood Race Course early on Tuesday morning.

He had been rushed to hospital after displaying symptoms of hypothermia.

It is understood that the man, who had been diving in the tunnels in search of lost jewellery, had told a security guard that his two friends were lost in the tunnels, swept away by rising water levels.

Police Search and Rescue officers were unable to search for the missing men, as the City’s water works had already begun a routine chemical flush of the pipe system.

On Thursday, the bodies of two men were discovered at the Merewent Sewerage Water Treatment main inlet, which is blocked by a steel grate to halt any flotsam.  

The bodies were hauled from the raw human waste and had plastic bottles fastened around their necks.

Contained within the bottles were scrap metal, coins and jewellery that the two had found while searching through the sewerage.

Source: News24

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