Sinkhole causes three houses to be evacuated in North Yorkshire - February 17, 2014
The homeowner Peter Cunningham said he could not open the backdoor when he and his wife, Susan, returned home last night. “I looked up at the wall and there’s a big crack at the side of the back door. I thought that’s not right,” he told Sky News.
“Then I could hear it coming away above my head. It’s like being in a nightmare. I could see the house opening up,” he said.
Police cleared the properties on Magdalen's Close in Ripon, North Yorkshire, at 5.40pm after receiving reports the huge sinkhole had appeared.
A North Yorkshire police spokesman said: "The affected property and two houses nearby have been evacuated and a cordon has been put in place to protect members of the public. At this stage no injuries have been reported."
Eight other sinkholes to open up so far this month:
• On 2 February, a 30ft sinkhole opened up in a driveway in Walter’s Ash, near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and swallowed a Volkwagon Lupo. Phil Conran, said his teenage daughter, Zoe, had a narrow escape: “The car is on its side, its full of soil and she certainly, we don’t think, would have got out of it had she been in it, had she driven in and it had happened.”
• Last week, a 17ft-deep hole appeared next to a child’s trampoline in a back garden in Barnehurst, south-east London. Gretel Davidson, told This is Local London, that her 12-year-old daughter Mia discovered the hole. She said: “Mia rang me to say, ‘Mum there is a massive hole in the garden.’ It is just unbelievable to think a hole that size could appear overnight and out of nowhere.”
• 11 February: a 10-mile stretch of the M2, near Sittingbourne, in north Kent was closed after a 15ft hole appeared in the central reservation, near Sittingbourne. The AA’s president, Edmund King, blamed the wet weather. Two more sinkholes have since appeared within a mile of the central reservation crater, according to ITV.
• 12 February: a family car was left hovering over a gas pipe when a sinkhole opened up in a driveway in Upper Basildon, west of Reading. The home is near the site of a former brick yard.
• 14 February: a sinkhole appeared near the sports hall of Rainham Mark Grammar School, in Gillingham, Kent. Initial indications suggest it was triggered by drainage.
• 14 February: A second hole appeared in nearby Darland Avenue, Gillingham on a pitch used by the Anchorians Rugby Club.
• 15 February: 17 homes were evacuated when a 35ft-wide hole opened up in a cul-de-sac in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. Amateur video captured the extent of the damage.
Amateur footage shows a large sinkhole in Hemel Hempstead on Saturday. Seventeen homes were later evacuated.
A 30ft-sinkhole swallowed a car in High Wycombe last week
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