Hole Sweet Home
HER DRIVEWAY ate her for lunch.
Gayle Sorrentino of Long Island was swallowed by a hole that opened up at her house just after noon Friday when the pavement crumbled beneath her Subaru Outback with no warning.
“The car went in at like a straight angle,” the 69-year-old Sorrentino said. “I pulled in looking at my beautiful backyard — and then I was looking at a mound of dirt.”
Incredibly, the retiree, reportedly returning home from an acupuncture appointment, was not hurt. But she was trapped. Outside her windows, Sorrentino watched nervously as dirt steadily slid in around her. She began to fear that at any moment the hole could get bigger and she’d fall in deeper.
But within minutes of calling 911 from her cell phone, Sorrentino saw firefighters who came to her rescue had propped a ladder at her side window.
Sorrentino, who described her- self as standing straight up in the vertically situated vehicle, was then able to climb out safely.
“They were all speculating today about the weather, the snow, the ground was very wet,” she said when asked what could have caused the place where she has parked daily, for years, to give way. “There was never like any indication that this may be a problem.”
By Friday evening, the cause still wasn’t known. But cops have their suspicions. Rockville Officer Julie Grilli said it’s possible the top of a old cesspool simply caved.
“It’s very out of the norm,” Grilli told the Daily News, calling it the first incident of its kind for the area.
As a precaution, the driveway was cordoned off while sand was poured into the gaping hole once the car was removed.
To Sorrentino’s surprise, her Outback survived the mini-adventure.
“It looks perfectly fine!” she said. “They were able to drive it down the driveway and park it on the street, so it’s functional.
“It’s like a little miracle.”