A 2-meter-wide sinkhole emerged on a road in Nagoya on Thursday morning, leaving a car stuck but no one injured, local authorities said.
The incident occurred amid heightened public attention on a massive sinkhole that appeared in Yashio, Saitama Prefecture, near Tokyo last week, swallowing a truck and its driver.
Police received an emergency call at around 7:50 a.m. from the car driver in his 30s who said the front wheels of his car had fallen into a hole after the road caved in. The sinkhole was about 1.5 meters in depth, according to local authorities.
Construction work to replace a water pipe was underway nearby, and the authorities are investigating the cause of the incident, suspecting a hollow emerged underneath the site.
In the Yashio case, a sewer pipe running underground in the area was found damaged. The sinkhole, which first emerged on Jan. 28, has since merged with a second sinkhole nearby and expanded to about 40 meters in width and 15 meters in depth. The male driver remains missing.
© KYODO
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Newgirlintown
Crumbling Japan.
Asiaman7
Hopefully the Nagoya driver didn’t need help getting out of the hole. Otherwise, they might still be in there, as in the case in Yashio.
sakurasuki
Failing piping and infrastructure.
tora
Amazed something hasn't happened in central Tokyo yet. The whole city is just a disaster waiting to happen. It's basically a network of canals paved over, crisscrossed by subways and other underground infrastructure. And much of it's sinking.
commanteer
This is unfortunately true, and the Japanese media has picked up on it. The typical symptom of a country that is going broke is aging and failing infrastructure. We are seeing a lot of it now in the US, in some European countries, and here in Japan (especially outside of Tokyo, which gets better care). Parks, playgrounds, public steps, and many things that would cost relatively little to repair are simply roped off and left to decay for years unless they are in a prominent location. Infrastructure is on ongoing expense and drastic changed are needed in Japan to restart the economy improve living standards.
wallace
Many countries have a failing infrastructure, including the US with sewer systems built many decades ago. Main sewers in Japan are constructed from bricks. Earthquakes everyday subject them to stress.
wallace
Sewer infrastructures were built before the heavy modern-day trucks and other heavy road vehicles. The number of vehicles has greatly increased.