Office: 513-762-6434 / Cell: 513-702-5631 Paul.abrams@rrsc.com
Cincinnati, Ohio (Dec. 29, 2008) – At the end of each year, Roto-Rooter Plumbing and Drain Service surveys its 4000 field technicians throughout North America to develop a list of the five strangest items recovered from pipes and toilets over the course of the year.
The 2008 survey resulted in a surprising list of items ranging from cats to a diamonds. For plumbers it’s all in a day’s work to clear ordinary toilet clogs but occasionally Roto-Rooter recovers things that are a bit more unusual. Sometimes it’s a cell phone, car keys or a set of eye glasses. Sometimes the item is even more extraordinary or valuable. Here are the five strangest items recovered (in no particular order) from 2008.
1. DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER…GETTING LOST DOWN DRAINS
Cincinnati, OH – On April 22, Roto-Rooter was called to the home of Margaret Clark of Anderson Township, Ohio (in Greater Cincinnati). Mrs. Clark had been cleaning her 4-carat diamond ring, a 20th anniversary gift from her husband. She left the ring on the sink, wrapped in tissue, to dry. When she returned later, she absentmindedly grabbed the tissue, ring and all, and threw it in the toilet and flushed it down. Mrs. Clark instantly realized her mistake and panicked. She thought the ring was gone for good. She called Roto-Rooter for help. Roto-Rooter plumber Gary Morford used a fiber optic sewer inspection video camera to search the sewer pipes. A short while later, the camera’s bright LED lights reflected off of the brilliant diamond and Mrs. Clark spotted her ring deep inside the pipe on the camera’s video monitor. Morford pinpointed the location of the ring then jack hammered the concrete floor of the basement to expose the pipe and recover the valuable ring for the grateful customer.
2. HERE KITTY, KITTY
Harrisburg, PA – On April 26th, a family phoned Roto-Rooter in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to help find their lost cat, “Bud.” It seems Bud went missing four days earlier and was thought to have exhausted his nine lives until Linda Grudi heard faint meows coming from a downspout vent on the side of her house. Neighbors and a fire and rescue crew tried to locate the cat to no avail. When Dave Jones from Roto-Rooter arrived, he found that the home’s downspouts were routed underground with the pipe extending about 200 feet into nearby woods. Dave fed a fiber optic sewer inspection camera into the pipe and found Bud stuck at a junction about 120 feet into the pipe. The cat, being a large, full grown Maine Coon, was unable to move. A Roto-Rooter crew dug down a few feet and cut the pipe to free Bud. After four days inside the pipe, the cat lost several pounds and was dehydrated but he made a full recovery. Less than an hour after his rescue, a thunderstorm dropped so much rain on the area that Bud would have surely drowned if he had remained inside the pipe. The family suspects Bud was chased into the pipe by a predator in the woods or he himself chased a mouse into the pipe. (See photo). Fiber optic camera video also available here: http://www.youtube.com/user/rotorooter2000
3. PUMP UP THE KITTEN
Columbus, OH – On June 19th, Roto-Rooter’s Kevin Adkins used a fiber optic sewer inspection camera and a vacuum hose from his septic tank pump truck to suck a kitten from an underground pipe behind a Columbus, Ohio Ziebart auto detailing shop. The kitten had somehow fallen into the open pipe and the shop’s employees attempted to rescue it after hearing its cries for a couple of days. Ultimately, they flagged down Kevin Adkins from Roto-Rooter and asked for his help. Using the camera to see what he was doing, Adkins positioned the vacuum hose and applied mild suction to grab onto the kitten’s backside long enough to extract him from the pipe without causing harm. The kitten was adopted by one of the shop’s employees (See photo).
4. GETTING TO THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM
Bradenton, FL – In June, Roto-Rooter Contractor Bart Mathis of Sarasota, Florida was called to the United Way offices in Manatee County. The building had a clogged courtyard drain that caused the office to flood whenever there was heavy rain. Mathis cut into the underground pipe and found a giant root mass filling the entire pipe. When the root wouldn’t budge, he hooked up his 4 wheel drive truck to it and dragged it out of the pipe. Roto-Rooter had to close off four lanes of traffic because the root turned out to be 94 feet long and stretched across the nearby roadway. The monster root is one of the longest Roto-Rooter has ever extracted from a pipe (See photo).
5. TOY STORY
Fort Wayne, IN – In June, A Roto-Rooter service technician opened the 4-inch cleanout port for a home’s sewer system in search of the source of a mysterious clog that was preventing the home’s toilet, bathtub and washing machine from draining. Inside the pipe he found another piece of pipe that should not have been there. Then he removed a toy bowling pin and a steering wheel from a toy car among a collection of other small toys. Since the cleanout port was located near a patio it was obvious that children in the home learned how to open the port and had deposited the wayward toys that caused the clog. The technician removed the items, sealed the port with silicone and restored drainage to the house.
Over the years, Roto-Rooter plumbers have recovered guns, live puppies, illegal drugs, GI Joe dolls, electric razors, stacks of currency, false teeth, live snakes, prosthetic eyeballs, iPods and even an unexploded Civil War cannon shell from toilets, drainpipes and trenches. If an item can fit inside a pipe, Roto-Rooter has probably recovered it at one time or another.
Roto-Rooter was established in 1935 and today is the largest provider of plumbing and drain cleaning services in the United States and Canada. Roto-Rooter operates businesses in 113 company-owned territories and more than 500 independent franchise territories.
Local contacts:
Roto-Rooter of Cincinnati (general manager Michael Walker): 513-853-3930
Roto-Rooter of Harrisburg (general manager Dave Jones): 717-234-3332
Roto-Rooter of Columbus (general manager Ron Degner): 614-351-6318
Roto-Rooter of Sarasota (general manager Bart Mathis) 941-366-8090
Roto-Rooter of Fort Wayne (general managers John & Sherry Elward): 260-745-9969
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