American Tourist Rescued from Pattaya Sewer After Being Trapped For Over Seven Hours

Pattaya locals and rescuers rescued an unlucky American man who fell and got trapped in a sewer last night, May 16th. The man said he fell into the sewer around noon and wandered down there for hours.

A video version of this story can be found here.

At around 8 PM yesterday, rescuers from the Sawang Boriboon Thamasathan Foundation responded to a report of a tourist being stuck in a sewer on Soi Thep Prasit 8 in the Nongprue sub-district, Banglamung district, and rushed to help.

At the scene, a crowd of Pattaya residents were trying to lift a sewer lid to aid an individual, who seemed to be a foreigner, trapped inside. With combined efforts, the rescuers and residents removed the cover, and successfully extracted the individual from the approximately 60 cm wide and 1.5 meter deep sewer.

Rescuers told The Pattaya News that the victim was indeed a foreigner, but they could not immediately identify his name, although they stated that he was an American national. The victim looked disheveled, disoriented, and extremely weary, rescuers said.

Speaking via an interpreter, the man said he fell into a different sewer in Jomtien by accident around noon. He was unaware of the exact location where he fell, but he recounted wandering through the muddy sewer for hours looking for a way out until he heard people’s voices from above. At that point, he called out for assistance.

The Pattaya News interviewed 25-year-old Mr. Charlie Boonsri, who was the first person to hear the tourists cry. He said he heard someone shouting for help from somewhere. Surprised, he followed the source of the sound and eventually discovered that the pleas were coming from a sewer. He then peeked down the pipe and saw the victim stuck there in the mud.

The tourist was unharmed, however, he was still disoriented and could not speak properly. Immigration and tourist police took him to a police station to rest and were attempting to identify him as of press time.