Briefly: A sinkhole in Bilgola, a suburb in Sydney’s northern beaches district, has caused a landslide that has damaged a couple of houses. A fire truck responding to the incident, driving down the street, has been caught out — the road gave way and the truck is now tipped at a pretty precarious angle.
Image via Twitter
ABC News reports a burst water main is apparently the culprit of the sinkhole, which is on The Serpentine near Barrenjoey Rd. Fire crews are on the scene — obviously — and a Fire & Rescue NSW urban search and rescue team is on its way to check out how damaged the truck itself is.
Sinkholes are pretty dangerous things. A few months ago, a massive sinkhole inside the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky, USA swallowed eight cars, including the millionth Corvette ever produced. Recovery work is still ongoing. In Guatemala City in 2010, an even larger sinkhole swallowed a three-story factory.
The Bilgolga pumper, which looks like a Varley Commander, weighs over 14,000kg with capacity for 1800 litres of water — that’s a lot of mass to be sitting on top of unsafe terrain. Hopefully it’s retrieved soon without further incident. [ABC News]