BETHLEHEM, Pa. – A 20-foot sinkhole opened Saturday morning in a neighborhood along Covington Avenue in Bethlehem, just feet from nearby homes. Multiple agencies responded, blocking off the road and working to secure the area.<\/p>\n
The sinkhole hit close to home for Tim Fritz, who lives in the neighborhood. Fritz had already left Saturday morning for his shift with the Bethlehem Fire Department when he was notified about the collapse. He turned around and headed back home to check on his property and the surrounding area.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy house is still standing, and I hope that whatever kind of undermining was occurring didn’t impact the properties of both myself and my neighbors,\u201d Fritz said.<\/p>\n
Multiple agencies responded to the scene Saturday morning, blocking off the road as crews worked to repair the sinkhole before reopening the road about eight hours later.<\/p>\n
Officials later determined a leaking pipe was a contributing factor in the sinkhole. Fritz said a neighbor had noticed a drop in water pressure about a week earlier.<\/p>\n
Fritz said the incident is a reminder that problems underground can quickly become hazards above ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cNotify the appropriate city agency. If you notice a drop in water pressure or change in the color of your water or something doesn’t seem right, there’s a chance it probably isn’t right,\u201d Fritz said.<\/p>\n
Fritz said he hopes this will be the last time he has to deal with a sinkhole so close to his home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. – A 20-foot sinkhole opened Saturday morning in a neighborhood along Covington Avenue in Bethlehem, just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,1391],"class_list":["post-284836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-bethlehem-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}