It didn’t rain in red roses Stockholm – but lots of dog poop. Cars, a historic building and several trees received thick, smelly mud.
The curious reason: The Stockholm subway company carried out underground blasting for construction work. The pressure wave also cleaned the ventilation pipes.
One of these pipes protrudes a few centimeters from the ground in Stockholm’s Vasastan district, about the size of a gutter drainpipe. There were around 50 filled dog poop bags inside. The pressure wave threw them up to 30 meters into the air and tore them apart – that’s why it rained dog poop.
The feces bags flew out of this pipe
Emma Sahlman, press spokeswoman for the subway company “Nya Tunnelbanen”: “We heard from residents that some bags even flew over the roof and landed in an inner courtyard.”
How the bags got into the small tube is anyone’s guess. “I think that a resident here regularly walks his dog and stuffs the poop bags into the pipe,” said the spokeswoman. He or she probably had no idea it was a vent pipe. “One can only hope that whoever uses the trash cans in the future.”
Too cold for a major cleaning
Immediately after the excrement explosion, a renovation company was brought in to take care of the historic house wall. A city gardener should clean the affected trees. But patience is necessary.
The company has announced that it is currently too cold for larger operations. A spokeswoman told the local newspaper “Mitt i”: “There is a strong wind and it often snows. You can’t send someone up there on a lift.”
A resident: “It doesn’t matter in this cold. We all find this very strange. We now call our house ‘Poop Cannon House’. Fortunatly nobody was hurt. That’s why you can laugh about it with a clear conscience.”