An incident that started with smoke billowing from a closed manhole in southeast Sacramento ended with firefighter rescue teams finding "smoldering trash" and other evidence that people had been living in an underground pipe.
The Sacramento Fire Department responded after receiving reports about 10:45 a.m. of smoke emerging from a manhole on Power Inn Road, just north of Fruitridge Road, the department said in tweets. The busy surface street was closed in both directions in the area.
Fire crews soon determined, after initially reporting that they believed the source to be an underground vault, that the smoke was actually coming from a "large underground drainage pipe" and that they would search it for any potential victims in need of rescue.
The Fire Department said in a 1 p.m. update that the incident has been resolved, discovered to be a trash fire but with no victims located in the pipe. Traffic has reopened on Power Inn Road.
"The fire was smoldering trash with evidence of people living in the underground pipe," the Fire Department tweeted.
The department tweeted video from the incident, showing more than a dozen firefighters working to access the pipe through a large side grate.
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