Chicago is the victim of another massive sinkhole, this time in the south side neighborhood of West Pullman.
Shannon Breymaier, from Mayor Rahm Emmanuel's office,
told The Chicago Tribune the area round 124th Street and Wentworth Avenue remained closed Tuesday as crews continued to investigate the cause.
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The newspaper reported that a leaking water line breached a sewer main and washed away the soil below a street. An eight-inch water main broke when the street caved in, creating a hole that is about 30 feet deep.
Bill Bresnahan, managing deputy commissioner of the city department of water management,
told the Chicago Sun-Times that the collapse might have been caused by a leak in the water service to one of the homes. He said that leak could have washed out sinkhole area, causing the road to give way.
Bresnahan confirmed to the Chicago Sun-Times that the water main in the area was new and broke after the road collapsed.
In April, the
Tribune reported that a water main break was the culprit in a huge sink hole in the 9600 block of South Houston Avenue, swallowing three cars in its wake. Officials then said that water main dated back to 1915.
In the latest sinkhole incident, city officials told the Tribune that water service was returned to neighborhood homes before midnight Tuesday. The city gave bottled water to residents until it was fixed.
Tthe city will now repair the breached sewer main, which will take several days.
Some neighbors, like Christopher Carpenter, ended up with 2 feet of water in their basement and also lost gas service, wrote the Chicago Sun-Times.
Carpenter told the Sun-Times he saw water shooting up out of his grass in "about four different places" on Wentworth before the street collapsed.
"It looked like Buckingham Fountain," Carpenter said to the Sun-Times.
Carpenter said he was standing outside of his home Sunday with his sister, daughter, niece and nephew when the west side of Wentworth starting caving in.
"It was like a big boom," Carpenter told the newspaper.
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