Return of the fatberg: 40-metre mass of grease and wet wipes removed from London sewer
Blob of congealed fat, waste and wet wipes removed from under the streets of London
You can run but you can't hide … or flush your toilet.
Yes, it's the return of the fatberg, a monstrous blob of congealed fat, waste and wet wipes coming soon to a sewer near you. Especially if you happen to live in west London.
This week's culprit is a 40-metre bruiser removed from under the leafy streets of Chelsea and weighing as much as five Porsches. The latest fatberg was so big it broke a 70-year-old sewer pipe, leaving Thames Water with a £400,000 (HK$4.64 million) repair bill.
It wasn't even the area's worst. In 2013, "Britain's biggest berg", weighing 15 tonnes and as long as a double-decker bus, was found in Kingston upon Thames, and last year a fatberg the size of a Boeing 747 was discovered under the streets of Shepherd's Bush.
"It's definitely getting worse," says Craig Rance, a campaigns executive at Thames Water.
"We're seeing a rise in the number of wipes being flushed down the toilet as people move away from toilet paper. And only one in 10 know how their drains work.
"People think the toilet is some magic portal that makes everything disappear, but it all has to go somewhere."