A 10-year-old boy who was swept into a storm drain while helping his family clean up storm debris is being kept on life support so that his organs can be donated, according to his father.
The boy, Asher Sullivan, “officially passed away” on May 18, but remains on life support to facilitate the organ donation process, his dad, Jimmy Sullivan, wrote in a Facebook post.
“It’s 100% an ‘Asher’ type thing to do in continuing to be selfless,” Sullivan shared on Facebook. “He will have an honor walk at the hospital in the next few days and be celebrated as he is, a hero!”
Due to increased hurricanes and flooding we probably need a law that specifies storm drains have some type of safety grate. This isn’t that rare either - years ago a friend’s daughter died after being sucked into a drainage pipe.
I worked for the stormwater division of my city up until recently.
We had 6 people responsible for the inspection of over 30,000 pieces of stormwater infrastructure all of which needs to be inspected within a 5 year cycle. We also have to deal with citizen complaints, assisting other departments, updating maps/inventories, writing EPD/EPA reports, etc. and all for 15-18$/hr. My experience is far from abnormal as well.
We need city level government to actually give a shit about stormwater infrastructure to even get things working halfway properly let alone setup safety features.
Your comment made me think of John Oliver’s episode on infrastructure
NYC DEP?
This, but also make it a rule that any new ones have a grill or improved design or something.
it seems that it’s only the US that uses that design, I could be incorrect. But presumably other places have streets and storms and have have to come up with a solution that doesn’t have enough space to house an adult sized male clown.
Not discounting safety features… but wouldn’t the delta p in that situation be enough to take you out anyways? Or is the bigger problem once you’re inside the infrastructure?
Honestly a lot of jobs should be helping maintain and service a city where there is larger products being made to pay the bills but everyone is scared of the money maker walking out on them and having to manage to the kids without the income so we just got rid of and cut back as much as possible and figure it will just work out.
My city hires work visa immigrants for bottom barrel prices to handle road infrastructure. Roads, the thing we care about most here in the USA and we can’t even properly fix and maintain them.
A good city employs it’s people to maintain the city while it’s citizens figure out new services and products to make for more generated revenue. We let the whole place go to shit though and now no one wants it anymore.