According to Dunlop it was on December 28 around 3pm, while she was busy at the front of her house when she heard a child screaming for help.
“If I was at the back of my house I would not have heard her calling for help,” she says.
She went to investigate and saw a little girl of about five years of age standing shoulder-deep in the water.
“My first reaction was how to get the child out of there as I did not know how long she had been in there,” she says.
Without blinking an eye, she reached down to try to pull the girl out, but wasn’t successful.
She says she had to climb into the water-filled manhole, dug by the metro on December 5, to rescue the child.
She picked the girl up and pushed her out of the hole, and with her bad back she was not giving it a thought on how to get out herself.
After trying to pull herself up against the overgrown grass she realised that she might be stuck in this hole for a long time.
“Eventually I kicked a hole with my takkie into the muddy side of the manhole to at least see if I would be more successful this time,” she says.
But it did not work as it was slippery and she had to make another plan.
Finally she managed to get hold of an overgrown scrub branch to pull herself out of the muddy mess.
She adds it took her more than half and hour to get out of the hole.
When she finally freed herself from the hole, the child was nowhere to be seen.
“I think the little girl was so scared that she ran straight home as she was soaking wet and scared and I do hope she is alright” adds Dunlop.
She concludes she is happy she could save the child.
This was a leaking manhole that has been reported several times in January 2012 and the metro finally came out to investigate at the end of November.
On December 5, the metro dug a hole of almost two metres, put a red barrier tape around it and left it open for the entire festive season.
“I made several calls to the metro after I noticed they were not coming back, but to no avail,” says Dunlop.
When someone finally answered the phone on December 19, she was told metro workers will come out immediately to fix the problem, but no-one came out.
She adds a lot of rain fell over the festive season and the water must have filled the manhole.
“If I’d known it would cause such an incident, I would not have bothered to phone the metro at all,” concludes Dunlop.
No comment was received from the metro at the time of going to print.
