A binman has spoken of his shock after a giant pothole opened up on the road in front of him and swallowed his entire rubbish truck. He was lucky to escape unhurt after his truck fell into the 12 ft hole when the tarmac collapsed underneath him. But he still had to be winched to safety by rescuers after he was trapped in the hole for two hours in Craiova, Romania.
He said: “One minute I was fine, the next I was falling into the earth. There was a loud crack and I thought I’d hit something. But the road just fell away underneath me and everything went black.”
Here a video of 3 cars being swallowed by a sinkhole in Chicago:
Although Romania has escaped the worst of the flooding that has hit large parts of central Europe this week, the road’s collapse has been blamed on weeks of torrential rain. Engineers say that the hole opened up because the ground under the tarmac had been washed away by powerful underground floods.
Craiova is not the first city to be hit by problem potholes opening up in roads. Huge sinkholes began appearing all over Samara in south east Russia earlier this year swallowing cars, buses and claiming at least one life. It is thought the holes were caused as ice thawed and melted into the ground, with the excess water causing soil decay underneath Samara’s roads.
