The hours-long search for a trapped puppy in Utica turned out to be a false alarm.

Utica city workers got a call at 9 a.m. this morning for what seemed to be a trapped puppy whimpering somewhere in the ground beneath the Utica National building on Broadway in the downtown, said Sonny Greco, chief of staff for Utica Mayor Robert Palmieri.

City police, fire fighters and department of public works crews set out on a frantic search to find the puppy. In the end, after more than two hours of searching, digging with a backhoe and pick axes and searching down a waste-deep hole, they found a sewer problem.

"It wasn't a puppy," Greco said. "But it sounded just like one."

Greco wasn't certain what the sewer problem is.



Contact Marnie Eisenstadt at 315-470-2246 or meisenstadt@syracuse.com.