A man was rescued from a vault toilet at a California campground Saturday afternoon after falling in while trying to retrieve his sunglasses, the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office said.
The incident occurred at about 2:30 p.m. PT at Camp Edison at Shaver Lake, in the Sierra Nevada foothills about 50 miles northeast of Fresno. Sgt. Chris Tullus told local news outlet YourCentralValley.com that a caller reported the fall to dispatchers.
“Via a Spanish translator, they advised that the subject had fallen into the chemical storage tank,” Tullus said.
Tullus said law enforcement, Camp Edison staff and fire personnel responded and safely extricated the man.
“Law enforcement, Camp Edison staff and fire personnel responded and were able to safely get him out, decontaminate him, and he’ll be OK,” Tullus said.
The man was not injured but “required a hosing down” from the Cal Fire crew before leaving the scene, Tullus added.
The vault toilet is a waterless, non-flushing facility common at remote campgrounds. A YouTube walk-through posted more than a decade ago described the Camp Edison facility as “very clean and well maintained” with electric lighting and toiletries.
The incident echoes similar entrapments. In Michigan in 2023, a woman fell into an outhouse toilet retrieving an Apple Watch. In Australia in April, a tourist spent hours in waist-deep sewage after a long-drop toilet collapsed at a meteorite crater near Alice Springs.