Hole Covered Without Dog Being Recovered
Dear Sir,
On the 17th May I contacted the Fire Service to tell them my 11 stone Cane Corso dog ‘Zack’ had fallen down an open man-hole and drowned in the field opposite the Gretna where Livin are building new houses. He had slipped through a broken gap in the fence which is down in several places around the perimeter of the field. The Fire Service said they could not attend as it wasn’t a rescue.
They contacted the County Council and my daughter and I met Council employees Peter Clennel and Paul Bambrouge and took them to the place of the incident. They said they would secure the man-hole for safety purposes and would get my dog out the next day and take him to the vets as he was chipped. The next day I asked my daughter to telephone the council to find out what time they would be getting Zach out of the man-hole.
They said they wouldn’t be getting him out as they had no jurisdiction over that field. They told her to contact the Water Board and Environmental Health, which we did, but were told they had no jurisdiction over the property either.
So I arranged to get him out myself with the help of friends. but when I got to the field at 4 o clock, to my shock and horror the man-hole had completely disappeared without a trace and had been filled in! My daughter contacted the Council and Water Board and both said they weren’t responsible.
I am really upset about this, if I had known the Council weren’t going to get him out on the Monday I would have made plans to retrieve his body myself on the Sunday. I wrote to the County Council on the 22nd May asking them to investigate this incident as a health and safety violation.
This has happened before when Don Thory’s show spaniel fell down the same man-hole last year and it was reported. Earlier this year the Fire Brigade was called out because Joanne Woodward’s Labrador had hung itself on the barbed wire fence around the field.
I have received no response from the County Council yet, so could Newton News please investigate this incident for me? This could so easily have been a child.
Michelle Daniels
Clanny Road
County Council Response
Jimmy Bennett, clean and green manager at Durham County Council, said: “We acknowledge that this situation must be extremely upsetting for the dog’s owner. We visited the site on Sunday 17th May after receiving a call from a member of the public regarding a missing manhole cover.
“On arrival a lady showed the call-out crew where the manhole was and said that her dog had fallen into it. The manhole was full of water so they used a stick to see if they could feel anything but could not. We put in place a flag stone over the access hole as a temporary safety measure to prevent anyone falling in during the rest of the weekend and explained to the dog’s owners that the issue with the manhole cover would be reported the following day.
“We did not say that we would go back to retrieve the dog from the manhole as we would not be able to carry out such a task due to the complex and specialist nature of this work. Unfortunately we are not able to offer any further assistance as we do not own the land or the manhole.”
