The Longfellow man who was severely injured last October when a manhole cover blew off the sidewalk near his home, says the city has done little to prevent another accident from happening.

“The sewer is blowing more now than ever before,” Peter Kadlec told Ryan North in the Longfellow-Nokomis Messenger.

Kadlec was trying to replace the manhole cover after it had blown off during a heavy rainstorm October 4, 2005, when it blew off again, sending him flying. When he awoke from an induced coma a month later, he was paralyzed below the chest.

“I’ve put that thing on at least 25 times,” Kadlec recalled. “What people don’t understand is that it’s in the middle of the sidewalk. I usually put it back on; somebody could fall in.”

Kadlec, who owned a machine shop before the accident, now serves as a consultant to the company and is working to get some compensation from the city, an exercise he said could take as long as five years.

Meanwhile, the city has removed the manhole cover and built a five-foot-high cement cylinder with a metal grate welded to the top, but nothing has been done to prevent the water from shooting out through the grating during a heavy rain.

City Council Member Gary Schiff, who represents the neighborhood, said the city has been talking with the state of Minnesota, which owns the storm water tunnel that runs beneath the manhole, about a plan to widen it, thus easing the water pressure. But no funding exists to pay for such a plan.