Curious and Unusual Deaths

Deaths In New York (2x4)

Air date: Mar 23, 2012

“New York Sucks”: Three New York City workers were assigned the task of clearing debris from a 50 cm drainpipe in a reservoir. One of the workers stood in the three-foot deep water and steadied their boat, while another used a pole to unblock the drain. But clearing the blockage created a vortex that sucked a city worker 200 feet down the pipe, to his death. “Steamed in New York”: Thinking she was perfectly safe, a young woman took a mid-afternoon nap in her third-story apartment. Outside her window, workers struggled to fix a leak in the kilometres of steam pipes buried beneath New York City. But a worker’s oversight created a steam explosion that threw mud and boulders 18 stories into the air and through the young woman’s bedroom window. “The Electric Dog Walker”: A graduate student walked her dogs down a New York Street. Slush and snow covered the lid of a utility box buried in the street, which faulty wiring had electrified. Her dogs stepped on it and as the graduate student rushed to help, she also received a constant shot of 57 volts, which killed her.