A sinkhole opened up in the middle of an intersection in Japan on Tuesday and, unfortunately, a truck and its 74-year-old driver were swallowed during the dramatic incident. He is still trapped down there and emergency responders haven’t been able to communicate with him. If you know anything about survival situations, spending more than 3 days without food or water is extremely dangerous.
The sinkhole in Yashio, just 18 miles north of downtown Tokyo, was roughly 30 feet across when it first emerged and has since expanded to over 130 feet wide, CNN reports. Rescuers believe a corroded water pipe caused the sinkhole, and the leaking sewage fueled its expansion. Cranes were initially used to lift part of the truck out of the hole. However, a nearby gas pipe has complicated the attempts to rescue the trapped driver. The Guardian reported on how the rescue efforts are evolving:
As darkness fell on Friday, workers had started constructing a 30-metre long a ramp that they hope will allow them to reach the man, whose cab is covered in soil and other debris.
As residents of Yashio, a town in Saitama prefecture, questioned the slow pace of the rescue operation, the local fire chief, Tetsuji Sato, described the scene at the traffic intersection where the sinkhole opened up as “extremely dangerous”.
“We are planning to construct a slope from a safer spot so that we will be able to send down heavy equipment,” Sato said, adding that groundwater was continuing the leak inside the hole, which is still expanding.
To simplify geological science immensely, sinkholes happen when water meets carbonate rock. They can appear without warning to drivers on the surface and are occasionally obscured by the water fueling the depression. In January last year, a couple drove a 2015 Jeep Patriot straight into a flooded sinkhole in Vancouver, Washington. They were only able to escape the Jeep because of its manual roll down windows.