When residents of 1157 Lincoln Street in Blakely went to sleep on Friday evening, their car was seemingly parked safely in their driveway.<\/p>\n
At about 1 a.m., they woke up to find that car was swallowed up by a sinkhole.<\/p>\n
The Lincoln Street residents immediately reported the incident and crews rushed to the scene, first to evaluate the situation and then to come up with a plan to get the damaged vehicle out of the hole.<\/p>\n
Blakely Hose Company No. 2 Fire Chief Ed Santarangelo said sinkholes are common in the area because there are underground mines, but not sinkholes big enough to suck in a vehicle.<\/p>\n
He estimated that the hole was about 15 feet wide and 20 feet deep.<\/p>\n
A crew from NEPA Towing and Recovery was called to the scene, secured the vehicle with special straps, and removed the car from the hole in about an hour.<\/p>\n
The car, an older model Honda,\u00a0 was heavily damaged and not drivable, Santarangelo said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe borough manager is still working on a cause,\u201d\u00a0 Santarangelo\u00a0said. \u201cWhen we left at 3:30 this morning, they were still working to find out what caused it.\u201d<\/p>\n
UGI and the water company also responded to the scene and residents lost both water and power for a period of time, he said.<\/p>\n
There was also a water main break in the area and responders don\u2019t yet know whether the break caused the sinkhole or the sinkhole caused the break, Santarangelo said.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t necessary to evacuate the house, Santarangelo said, because the car was parked at the end of the driveway, which is slanted away from the house.<\/p>\n
Santarangelo lauded the quick response of his department as well as that of the borough\u2019s Department of Public Works.<\/p>\n
For Santarangelo, the sinkhole might just be a once-in-a-lifetime thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never ran into one that big,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sporadically popping up \u2014 or actually down \u2014 sinkholes have long been a recurring problem in NEPA\u2019s old coal country.<\/p>\n
The gaping maw in Blakely is the latest of several over the past years, including one in Dunmore in June and another in Mayfield in January.<\/p>\n
Wilkes-Barre government officials struggled since June when a massive sink hole opened up on its South Side, closing an entire block of Horton Street to traffic for five months.<\/p>\n
The Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation is responsible for resolving problems such as mine fires, mine subsidence, dangerous highwalls, open shafts and portals, mining-impacted water supplies and other hazards which resulted from past coal mining (pre-1977) practices, according to a post on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania website.<\/p>\n
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