Street swallows SUV
Sinkhole opens under parked vehicle in East Village
Hole-y moly.
A parked SUV was swallowed by a sinkhole that appeared overnight in the East Village, police said.
The giant hole, large enough to swallow the silver Toyota SUV that fell into it, developed on E. Second St. near Avenue A sometime overnight between Saturday and Sunday, cops said.
“The SUV in question was parked over the sinkhole when it collapsed. No occupants were in the vehicle,” said a Department of Environmental Protection spokesman. “Water has been shut down, and emergency crews will be making the necessary repairs.”
Neighbors nearby complained that sinkhole was caused by an ongoing sewage problem. A few basements near the incident were flooded and still had standing water in them Sunday morning.
“I’m telling everyone in our building not to flush their toilets, because it backs up into our basement,” said John von Hartz, 87, who lives nearby and woke up to city workers trying to access the sewage line in his basement.
DEP was not immediately able to provide a reason for the sinkhole, saying it was still under assessment.
“We see these things on TV and in the newspapers. … You don’t imagine it happening in Manhattan because it’s so dense,” said von Hartz, who has lived in the neighborhood for 50 years. “But wherever you have water running, it eats away at what’s underneath it.”