Last week my usually absent neighbor was in town and he and his wife were doing some yard clean-up. She discovered a hole in the ground near their garage and called him over to see. As he was looking at it, the ground collapsed beneath one foot and he went in up to his hip. A smaller person would have fallen through into the old cistern below.

The cistern was covered over with planks and then buried beneath 2 feet of soil. Over the years, the planks had rotted and fallen into the cistern but the caliche soil over the top of it was tough enough to remain in place until recent rain softened it up.

The old cistern was about 10 feet in diameter, about 15 feet deep, and still mostly full of water.

The most frightening thing is that my kids had been playing there just hours before. Had they fallen in, it is unlikely that we would have heard, discovered or known where they had disappeared until much too late.

If you build a cistern, please make sure that it is well marked and has a reinforced concrete roof. If you abandon a cistern, please be responsible and fill it in.

Safety, safety, safety with cisterns/rain barrels. Lucky neighbor and lucky children you have. This brings to mind my neighbor several years back had some rain barrels with hoses attached to get rid of the overflow. He was on vacation for about two weeks, and it rained a lot during that period. His rain barrel overflow headed straight down his back yard toward his backyard neighbor's retaining wall. Needless to say, with the rain and the runoff from his rain barrels, the retaining wall had to be re-inforced because it started bulging. Again, lucky folks.