A roadside bathroom break in Australia turned into a three-hour ordeal for one woman who ended up stuck up to her waist in a collapsed pit toilet. Authorities in the Northern Territory say the individual, traveling with her husband and two children to Canberra after visiting family in Darwin, stopped to use the facilities at the Henbury Meteorites Conservation Reserve, about 90 miles southwest of Alice Springs, when the structure, known as a pit latrine, gave way, per the BBC.
A community Facebook page has some pics of the scene. Pit latrines, which are commonly found at remote Australian sites and also known as long-drop toilets, typically feature a hole in the ground for people to unload their business in, with no flushing capability, the BBC notes. A witness tells local media that the woman in this case was finally freed when the woman’s husband drove a little ways to try to find cellphone reception and came upon a passing tradesman, per the Guardian.
That helper dropped a rope into the sewage pit, then used his vehicle to help haul her out—an effort that took more than 45 minutes, the witness said, describing the pit as filled with waste and discarded diapers. The woman was taken to a hospital, though she avoided serious injury. NT WorkSafe says it was notified by the agency that manages the conservation area about the incident and has opened an investigation. This isn’t the first mishap in a pit latrine: Firefighters in Victoria freed a man from a similar toilet two summers ago, while a 2012 fall in Queensland left a 65-year-old woman with a broken leg, per the BBC.