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Man entering a public toilet in a campground in a national park
Camping is a great way to get in touch with nature, but you also run the risk of encountering some awkward situations when nature calls. However, it’s hard to think of a worse scenario than the one a man in California encountered after falling into the tank of a toilet while he was trying to retrieve a pair of sunglasses.
People who go camping tend to fall into one of a few categories differentiated by how many aspects of modern life they’re willing to leave behind when they embark on a journey.
On one end of the spectrum, you have people who opt to stay in an RV that’s essentially a mobile apartment outfitted with basically everything you’d have access to back at home, and on the other, there are people who really rough it by heading into the middle of the woods with nothing but a tent and as many essential supplies as they can fit into their backpack.
There’s also a middle ground at campgrounds that offer visitors the chance to escape into nature while still offering them access to basic amenities likes showers and toilets. That’s the case at Camp Edison in California, where one man needed to hop into the former after falling into the latter.
A man had to be rescued after falling into the tank of a toilet at a campground in California
Camp Edison is located on Shaver Lake in California and boasts more than 250 campsites on a plot of land that’s located a little more than an hour’s drive northeast of Fresno.
Visitors there have access to plenty of trappings of modern life, as campers can take advantage of its WiFi, electrical outlets, hot showers, and the dedicated toilets that dot its grounds.
Most of those toilets are not connected to any sort of plumbing but are glorified outhouses that empty into a dedicated tank that is periodically emptied out (a setup known as a “vault toilet).
According to KTLA, an unidentified camper was using one of them on the afternoon of Saturday, June 20th when he managed to drop a pair of sunglasses into the sewage. Plenty of people would decide to cut their losses when greeted with that development, but he opted to try to fish them out before falling into the tank he was unable to escape from on his own.
He was thankfully able to get someone to call 911, and first responders from the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to his location alongside members of CAL FIRE and Camp Edison Employees. Officials said the man spent 10 to 15 minutes in the sewage tank before being rescued, and he was hosed down by firefighters as a decontamination measure after being pulled out.
Talk about a crappy situation.