Fire crews call in Lanes in drain search for pet pooch

A Lanes Group engineer working for Thames Water has helped firefighters search for a pet dog after his owner saw him scamper down a disused drain pipe while chasing a fox.

John Dale, who works for the Lanes Utilities Division on its wastewater network maintenance contract for Thames Water, was responding to an urgent request from the fire crews to make use of his high-tech drainage camera to search for the wayward Jack Russell.

The dog was being taken out for a late night walk in fields near Colnbrook, Slough, in Berkshire, when it ran off after a fox and was seen disappearing down the old drain pipe.

The worried owner waited for the dog to come out to no avail, so called the fire service. Despite using a listening device and digging into the pipe in a number of places, the firefighters could not precisely locate the dog.

So they called Thames Water, knowing the utilities company would have access to the latest sewer and drain inspection equipment, which resulted in John Dale being sent to the scene.

He said: “We were called because the fire service didn’t have a camera that could be guided right into the drain to look for the dog. So I put our drainage camera, which has a long flexible cable, into the pipe and quite quickly identified the fox.

“At that moment, the dog appeared behind us. It looks like it could have found its way out of the drain a few moments before, and came to see what all the fuss was about. It was perfectly fine.

“I checked the line further with the camera and confirmed that the fox would be able to get out. It probably would have left the drain soon after we left.”

In 2013, in a similar incident in Hendon, North London, a Lanes utilities drainage crew used a CCTV drainage survey camera to locate and rescue Dottie the dog, who had become stuck down a surface water drain on a playing field.