Deer Park man recalls storm drain fall

Joe Hranicka was bleeding and screaming for his life. The parking lot sweeper from Deer Park had fallen into a 25-foot-deep storm drain in Uniondale Monday night and nearly eight hours later, he was no closer to getting out.

"I would scream my head off," Hranicka said Wednesday from his hospital bed at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, where he was awaiting surgery. "I was so scared that nobody was going to find me. It's an isolated area."

Luckily for Hranicka, passerby Tim Eareckson, 51, was biking by that morning, saw Hranicka's vacant sweeper truck and went to check out the screams.

"It was just a relief to see his face looking down the hole. Then I knew it was all right," Hranicka said, adding, "I said, 'Please stay with me, don't leave.' He said, 'I'm going to stay right here.' "

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal workplace safety agency, is investigating why Hranicka, 50, fell into the drain while cleaning the parking lot.

Earlier this week, someone had removed the metal grate covering the drain, officials said. The company that maintains the lot apparently covered the hole with plywood until metal could be put back in place, authorities said.

Hranicka said he had cleaned that same parking lot on Jerusalem Avenue in Uniondale literally hundreds of times over the years. When he saw the plywood over the drain Monday night at about 11 p.m., he thought it was just a piece of debris. He went to pick it up but never expected to find a big hole in the ground.

"I went right down with the wood in my hand. My face bounced off the hole and I dropped," he said.

The other shopping centers he was supposed to clean -- in Lawrence, Brooklyn and Hewlett, to name a few -- were calling his bosses at Islip-based Pam Sweeping to complain their properties hadn't been cleaned. Meanwhile, Hranicka waited for someone to hear his screams.

Deep in the darkness, his blood was pooling up around him. He couldn't move, his ribs and wrists were broken and his eyes became swollen. No matter how loud he shouted, no one seemed to hear.

After Eareckson discovered him and alerted authorities, rescuers arrived and used a rope-and-pulley system connected to poles to send a basket into the hole.

Once he gets better, Hranicka said, he looks forward to thanking Eareckson in person.

"You get a little nervous and panicky," Hranicka said. "But thank God I made it."