Warning! There are still manholes that pose a risk of explosion.
The city government has closed seven more storm drains that pose a risk; however, despite the ongoing works, not all of them have been mapped.
Rio247_ You're walking peacefully through the city and, suddenly, boom, a manhole explodes right in front of you or, worse, with someone on top of it. Rio residents, who have already walked through the city streets as if they were in a minefield, have been complaining about the construction work that disrupts crossings on sidewalks and street corners, but breathe a sigh of relief when they remember that it used to be much worse. It's improved a little now, with the City Hall closing seven more manholes at risk of explosion on busy streets.
From last year until a few months ago, a series of explosions in manholes on busy streets in downtown and the southern zone of Rio de Janeiro had been injuring people and causing damage. Gradually, the sight of smoking or burning manholes is disappearing from the Rio landscape. This morning, the City Hall closed off the manholes on Pereira Reis, Silveira Martins, Pedro Américo, Conceição streets and Rodrigues Alves Avenue.
Since the start of the operation on August 12th of this year, 13.444 manholes have been inspected in the city. To date, 171 manholes have been found to be at high risk of explosion. In all cases, the emergency protocol was activated, with immediate communication to the Rio Operations Center and the utility companies Light and CEG. The manholes were isolated and marked for immediate repair by the utility companies.
In Rio, almost all of the 5.500 km of cables that make up the city's electrical grid are underground, sharing space with piped gas, water, and telephone cables, beneath more than 15.000 manholes. The electrical grid is over 60 years old, but it has not received the necessary maintenance, as acknowledged by the president of Light himself, Jerson Kellman.
Despite the city's inspection, the danger of being blown away by an exploding manhole is not entirely eliminated. Strictly speaking, in addition to periodic maintenance, ten out of ten experts advise that it would be necessary to separate the electrical grid from the gas and water networks. But this would require creating a map of the city's underground infrastructure. For now, Light (the electricity company) will renovate 4.000 underground chambers and install electronic gas, water, and human presence sensors to prevent more manholes from exploding.