The United Kingdom‘s greatest pastime, aside from centuries of bloodthirsty imperialism and worshipping a clan of inbred Germans, is constructing fatbergs – the unholy coalescence of tons and tons of wet wipes, oil, grease and shit in sewage systems underground. Though technically fatbergs can happen anywhere with reasonably old piping, it seems like (anecdotally) 99% of them happen in the UK. I regret to inform you that a particularly large specimen has been identified: a 64-metre monstrosity of hardened fat, oil and baby wipes measuring 64 metres located in the country’s southwest.
Devon’s largest #fatberg has been discovered in Sidmouth. It’s a whopping 64 metres long, that’s over 6 double-decker buses back-to-back 🚌🚌🚌🚌🚌🚌😷#ThinkSink 👉 Don’t pour cooking oil, fat and grease down the sink#LoveYourLoo 👉 Only flush the #3Ps – pee, paper and poo pic.twitter.com/fTtd2vazLc
— South West Water (@SouthWestWater) January 8, 2019
(“Devon’s largest fatberg has been discovered in Sidmouth” sounds like the opening line to a legendary horror novel.)
Andrew Roantree, South West Water‘s director of wastewater, says that it will take up to eight weeks for turd engineers to extract the fatberg manually, in an operation I would say rivals last year’s miraculous Thai cave rescue in scale. The sheer amount of time required is because workers will be required to “dissect this monster in exceptionally challenging work conditions”.
The work to remove this Lovecraftian monstrosity from the sewers will begin on February 4, with engineers using “special sewer jetting equipment” to perform the task.
Despite the impressive girth of this particular specimen, it is by no means the largest fatberg extracted from beneath the earth of the cursed land known as England. In 2017, a 250-metre fatberg was found in sewers beneath Whitechapel in London, a chunk of which is on display in the Museum of London.
Why would you go to a museum to look at a fatberg, you might ask? I can’t answer that question. I have no insight into the twisted mind of the Brit. They are a species unto themselves.
