Cool video of a Failed drainage system

I still cant figure out why this is happening. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PhQ5gkNiqI

My guess would be that had some very localized extreme downpours where you had an enormous amount of water going through system at two separate times.

I heard stories of the manhole covers getting blown off during the Agnes flood right after it went over the bank.

Love the guy standing by the truck at 1:12...
Poor guy just cannot win...
Looks like it is on a hill...
Might be a chamber...
Probably close to the bottom of it judging by the height of the gyser...
Big sudden downpour overwhelms the capacity of the pipe...
And that is a big pipe...
It has to go somewhere...
Path of least resistance...
The large cover to that chamber...
Where did the lid in the road come from...

50-100 years ago, many major cities connected the storm sewer system to the sanitary sewer system to save money. It's a good idea as long as it doesn't rain too hard.

About 30 years ago, while living in Milwaukee, there was a super-heavy rainstorm. I recall seeing water 8-10" high running down the residential street behind the building where I worked. News pictures on TV that night showed the old Milwaukee County Stadium with more than 3 feet of water on the infield!

One of my friends had a geyser in his basement through the floor drain. Being 'lower' in town (4 blocks from Lake Michigan in Bay View) than most of the rest of Milwaukee all the storm water tried to run to the Jones Island processing plant. Needless to say, everything in the basement had to be discarded. All interior partitions had to be replaced and walls bleached to remove the untreated sewage odor.

As is (perhaps, still) customary during heavy rainfalls, they 'open the gates' and let everything go straight out to Lake Michigan without processing it. They can't handle the volume. Milwaukee and Chicago have/are digging 'deep tunnels' as a means to hold the massive runoffs until they can be pumped at a slower volume for processing when the weather is dry. I don't know how many other cities have built deep tunnels to hold the rainwater, but where I am in New England today, the same thing still holds true...except they have a large river to dump into.

Why? Gravity never sleeps.