Draining is not legal in many places, including the areas covered by this web site. Please do not enter these drains. This web site is intended to give you a virtual tour of these drains, not to encourage you in entering them.

On December 19 2000, a 14 year old boy died in a flash flood while exploring a drain, and another alomost drowned. The 14 year old, known as 'Bob' was a known drainer, with as much as a year's experience exploring drains. Don't kid yourself that that this sort of thing can not happen to you. If it can happen to an experienced explorer, it can happen to anyone.

Please heed these warnings. They are not a joke and are not put here to pay lip service to the law. Where it is not legal to explore drains, stay out of them! Draining is dangerous, you can be injured or killed by exploring drains.

Where it is legal to explore drains, make sure at the very least that you read the safety information and guide to drains on this web site.

The drain system may be subject to sudden rising of water due to storm activity in the upper catchment area. In this situation flash flooding may occur despite the weather being fine in UA City itself. An example of such flash flooding has recently occurred in Switzerland, and now in a UA City drain with tragic results. This type of flooding does occur regularly in some of UA City's drains, even those with small catchment areas.

Poisonous gases may enter the drain system due to either a chemical accident, or deliberate pollution, occurring in the street above.

Volatile substances may also enter the drains for the same reason. In these circumstances, even the use of a flash camera, and certainly smoking, could result in an explosion.

The drains are obviously dark and may be slippery. There are often sudden changes of direction and large vertical drops. These is clearly a risk of serious physical injury in these circumstances.

Deaths have occurred in drains. These include those of a fireman who died while on a training exercise, a water board worker who died while in an inner city drain. A scout died while exploring a drain. Just recently at the end of 2000, a 14 year old boy drowned while exploring a drain.

Basic Hydrology

In a storm, water flows off of streets and house roofs very rapidly.

Before cities existed, rain water was able to soak into the ground where it would seep down to the water table. Over time it would work it's way through the ground to creeks and waterways. This would happen over a period of hours to days, even months. In a city however, the large amount of impervious ground such as roofs, ashfelt and concrete prevent water from seeping into the ground. The water runs off these surfaces and straight into drains. In the chart to right it can be seen that the amount of water that pours into a drain after a rain storm is higher than that finding it's way into creeks and also happens a LOT faster.

Penalties under the Board of Works Act 1958

Various by-laws are made pursuant to sections 240A, 278 and 285 of the Board of Works Act. By-law No. 2: Waterways and Drainage Protection 1998 creates offenses in relation to trespassing and damage to drains under the control of the Water Authority. These include:

6. A person must not enter land, water or works if there is a sign displayed at or near the land, water or works or any entrance to the land, water or works indicating that entry to the land, water or works is prohibited.��

8. A person must not on or in any land, water or works � �

© light, maintain or use a fire; or �

(g) enter any drains; or

(h) dump any rubbish.�

(b) damage, interfere with or remove -

(i) any vegetation or fencing, gate or other structure or building; or

(ii) any vehicle, vessel, equipment or other property of Water Authority; or

(iii) any sign displayed by Water Authority;

The penalty for each of these offenses is a $1000 fine.

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Thus, once again it should be stated that this web site is for your viewing pleasure. There is NO REASON for you to enter any of these drains as all interesting aspects of them have been displayed here where you may view them from the safety of your computer. Do Not be tempted to enter these drains!

Some of the older drain reports may contain invitations to go explore a drain. Please do not. This information is gradually being removed from these pages, so disregard any suggestions to explore drains.