Remember the humongous sinkhole that opened under the floor of the Skydome of the National Corvette Museum in February 2014? It is one of the most covered sinkhole stories ever since the phenomenon became a worldwide problem. But whereas that incident exclusively involved cars, the sinkhole that has opened up in Peru swallowed up three people. Thankfully, everybody got out alive.
Local media reports that the sinkhole in the adjacent video opened in the asphalt of Trujillo, which is the second most populous city in the South American country. Experts claim that this particular cavity in the ground was caused by water erosion. More specifically, excess water plus insufficient drainage facilities formed the sinkhole in Trujillo, Peru.
The city was hit by unrelenting rainfall that battered and flooded the entire La Libertad region in Peru since early December. At the beginning of February, the Servicio Nacional de Meteorologia e Hidrologia warned that rainfall in Peru could be as high as 120 mm in 24 hours. Other than severely damaged and destroyed houses, the aggressive rainfall has left one dead and two injured in the San Martin Region in northern Peru.
As fate would have it, the Trujillo sinkhole that swallowed up a silver hatchback didn’t take the lives of those on board the vehicle. 31-year-old Edgar Orlanda Bartolo Silva, 34-year-old Marisol Mercedes Gutierrez Siccha, and their 2-year-old daughter managed to keep their cool after the 5-meter wide by 3-meter deep (16.4 foot x 9.8 foot) sinkhole ate the vehicle like the Cookie Monster om nom noms on his preferred snack.
Even though the passersby had called Peru’s central emergency number (105), they decided to save the family of three themselves because every second matters in such a situation. With the aid of ropes and strong men, all three were brought to safety, and when the authorities came, they winched the vehicle out of there.
What is there to learn from this story? The calm with which the young family accepted their own inability to escape the sinkhole and the passersby’s exemplary response to such critical circumstances are just two of the elements that ultimately saved the couple and their child from dying in the giant sinkhole.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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