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COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- City officials said several teens are playing in storm drains across Colorado Springs.

It is believed students from schools and neighborhoods on the southeast side of the city are using storm sewers to travel under Academy Boulevard to the Citadel Mall area.

That has emergency crews warning the public about the many dangers inside the underground drains.

"We get a couple reports a year of kids in the storm drain," Capt. Gary Reading with the Colorado Springs Fire Department Hazmat crew said. "There are a lot of hazards with that."

In January, emergency crews were called to rescue three teens thought to be trapped in a storm drain near Platte Avenue and Murray Boulevard. A Colorado Springs Utilities worker reported seeing the three enter a manhole in the area, and when he chased after them, his air monitor alerted him there was a lack of oxygen in the sewer.

"When we get calls of kids in the sewer drain," Reading said, "the hazmat team, our engine companies, as well as our confined rescue team, come out to find out what those hazards are and if those kids are in those hazards."

Authorities said the teens were able to escape the storm drain safely, likely out of a manhole miles from where they originally entered. With that in mind, the city is reminding the public that storm drains are not playgrounds.

"There's more than 400 miles of underground drainage in the city," Brian Merkle, an equipment operator with the City of Colorado Springs Street Division, said. " Some of these pipes will run for miles and miles and miles. Low oxygen is a constant threat."

Reading said flammability is also an issue inside the drains as well as a risk of methane release from the materials that are decomposing.

"There's so many hazards down there," Reading said. " We can have a thunderstorm in an afternoon and not know its coming . All of a sudden we have a lot of rain, and it fills these systems, and they become rapids."

The city said locking the manholes to prevent public access is not an option.

"For us," Merkle said, "it loses an emergency exit. If we come to a lid that's been sealed down, we will lose that access point and chance of escape."

Merkle said the city plans to create a public education group that would visit local schools to teach students about the dangers of storm drains and ditches.

To see raw footage of inside a city storm drain, click here.