A worker was crushed to death by a hydraulic urinal in London’s West End on Friday afternoon.
The man was working on the underground pop-up urinal near the Palace Theatre on Cambridge Circus, when the accident happened at around 1pm.
Rescue teams deployed 25 firefighters, four fire engines, an air ambulance and a crane in the hope they could lift the device out of the ground.
After almost two and a half hours, they managed to free the man with the help of a winch. Despite their best efforts, the man, who has not yet been identified, was pronounced dead at the scene, the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
The family of the victim, who is believed to have been servicing the UriLift toilet, have been informed.
At around 4.40pm, Scotland Yard tweeted:
We're sorry to have to update that, despite the efforts of emergency services, the man who was critically injured in Cambridge Circus was pronounced dead at the scene. His next of kin have been informed.
— MPS Westminster (@MPSWestminster) January 27, 2023
Cordons remain in place at the location.
Westminster City Council confirmed that it was temporarily shutting down the second of its UriLift toilets, on Villiers Street, as a “precautionary measure”.
A spokesman for the council said: “Our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with the friends and family of the worker who tragically died at this site in the West End.
“We have been on site supporting our contractor and the emergency services and will assist all investigations in any way we can.”
The London Fire Brigade confirmed that the man had been “trapped below street level underneath a hydraulic urinal”.
A London Ambulance Service spokesman said: “We were called today at 1.05pm to reports of an incident on Shaftesbury Avenue, Charing Cross.
“We sent a number of resources to the scene, including an ambulance crew, members of our hazardous area response team, members of our tactical response unit and a medic in a fast response car. We also dispatched London’s Air Ambulance.
“Sadly, despite the best efforts of our crews, a man was pronounced dead at the scene.”
The scale of the attempted rescue operation led one passer-by to believe emergency crews were responding to a terrorist attack.
The Palace Theatre, which has been staging JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child for the past six years, confirmed that Friday’s performance was going ahead as planned.
Telescopic urinals were rolled out across central London more than two decades ago as a way to deter late night revellers from urinating in public. They are designed to drop down into the ground to resemble manhole covers during the day and to rise above ground at night.
The first UriLift in London was installed by Islington Council near the Fabric nightclub after years of complaints by residents about drinkers urinating in the streets.
In 2014, an Amsterdam resident was injured when a UriLift urinal suddenly rose out of the ground, throwing a moped into the air that landed on top of him.
The Pop-Up Toilet Company which developed the UriLift in 1999, according to its website, has been approached for comment.
