Passers-by puzzle over a large pipe sticking up from the road on March 11 in an entertainment area of Osaka. (Video footage by Hiyori Uchiumi)
OSAKA—Passers-by near JR Osaka Station and Hankyu Osaka-Umeda Station had a bizarre start to the day when they were met with the sight of roughly 10 meters of a massive underground pipe sticking out of the road.
Police were also puzzled to see it after responding to an individual who called in around 7 a.m. on March 11 to report a piece of concrete had fallen from somewhere above.
No one at the scene was injured, although a traffic jam resulted after police closed the section of road around it that runs beneath an overpass.
A 67-year-old woman walking near the scene said, “I was really surprised. I became frightened when I imagined what might have happened had this occurred while people or cars were passing.”
With a total length of 27 meters, the steel pipe had been part of a construction site where workers intended to bury it to support a manhole before around 10 meters of it inexplicably ended up jutting through the asphalt.
The Osaka city government was conducting sewage work in the area where the accident occurred. The pipe had been filled with water, but that was removed on March 10, making the pipe lighter and might have contributed to it floating above the road.
A high-ranking Osaka city official said the cause of the unprecedented accident was being investigated.
(This article was written by Fuka Takei, Hana Matsuo and Mami Okada.)
AloJapan.com