Residents on one Canarsie block say a growing sinkhole has become a serious safety hazard, damaging cars and raising concerns that someone could be hurt if repairs aren\u2019t made soon.<\/p>\n
The sinkhole on East 95th Street has grown significantly over the past week, according to neighbors, who say repeated calls to 311 have failed to bring a permanent fix.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are children on the block,\u201d said neighbor Yvonne Lewis. \u201cThey are all running back and forth and this is absolutely dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neighbors say the road continues to crumble, and some residents have already experienced damage to their vehicles.<\/p>\n
\u201cI sit on my porch and I hear big bangs, and I think some folks even had some damage to their car,\u201d Courtney Sims said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a flat tire the other day,\u201d said Wesley Blackman. \u201cI had to pay $35 to get it fixed.\u201d<\/p>\n
LaToya Hicks said she has repeatedly contacted the city as the hole has continued to grow.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe called and told them that the hole is getting bigger and it\u2019s melting, and now that we have a heat wave, it\u2019s going to probably melt even more, and they said it\u2019s not an emergency,\u201d recalled Hicks. “There\u2019s nothing they can do right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Residents say they have been caught in the middle as city agencies determine who is responsible for repairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cDOT came and DEP came, but they\u2019re both blaming each other,\u201d Sims said. \u201cThat\u2019s whose responsibility. And that\u2019s not good for us as citizens of the neighborhood. I mean, somebody\u2019s got to take issue, you know, the issue of resolving it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sinkhole now measures more than 4 feet deep.<\/p>\n
Neighbors say this is the second sinkhole on the block in recent years and that another sinkhole farther up the street has been patched repeatedly over the years but has reopened dozens of times.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a problem for the last 23-plus years, and it\u2019s one hole after the other,\u201d Blackman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just come in, patch it and that\u2019s not what it needs because this used to be a swamp,\u201d Robert Epps said.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s Department of Transportation referred questions to the Department of Environmental Protection. After being informed that the photos of the sinkhole were taken Tuesday, DEP said it was sending a crew to investigate.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s the neighborhood that we\u2019re in, but it takes a long time for stuff to get done, and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s fair,\u201d Hicks said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey need to rectify the problem,\u201d said Blackman. \u201cAssure us, because we are taxpayers, we are doing what we have to do. You do what you have to do. That\u2019s my message to the city. Get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n
News 12 will update the story when the repairs are complete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Residents on one Canarsie block say a growing sinkhole has become a serious safety hazard, damaging cars and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-282889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}