Something in the manhole outside my apartment shorted out and caught fire last week. It hasn't been consistently on fire throughout the week, but has been intermittently flaring up. It starts with what sounds like a bomb going off and a few feet of flames shooting out of the manhole, followed by several progressively smaller shorts/explosions/flames over the course of 10-20 minutes. I've started to think of it as a shitty geyser.
The one thing ConEd has done, to my knowledge, is roll out a guy in a van to drill into/probe the sidewalk to make sure there's no current passing thru it. Beyond that? They put some trash, cones and caution tape around the manhole in question. But since this isn't on fire 24/7, and since people are people, someone parks over it almost straight away anyway.
ConEd said they don't do repairs until the spring, "because it's just going to keep snowing and raining." Since they've apparently decided this isn't a safety issue, they said to expect it to continue until then. And if something on the street catches fire, call the FDNY. WTF?