Giant hole swallows 12 vehicles in Mississippi restaurant parking lot

umbertino · November 9, 2015

No one hurt in cave-in measuring more than 120m (400ft) long that claimed cars and trucks. The question now is what caused it

Associated Press

Monday 9 November 2015 02.31 GMT

Experts are investigating the collapse of a restaurant parking lot at the weekend that created a 120m-long (400ft) hole that swallowed 12 vehicles in Mississippi. No one was hurt.

Buck Roberts, the public safety director of the city of Meridian, told the Meridian Star the Saturday night collapse was not the result of a sinkhole, which is generally caused when an underground water aquifer dries and leaves a void in the ground.

“You can call it what you want, a cave-in or whatever, but it is not a sinkhole,” Roberts said. He said engineers and contractors would be on the scene Monday studying the site.

Emergency crews were called to the IHOP restaurant in Meridian on Saturday evening and found a section of parking lot about 10.5m (35ft) wide and 122m (400ft) long had collapsed. Cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles had dropped into hole, which appeared to be about 4.5m (15ft) deep.

Gwendolyn Fikes told the newspaper her daughter’s car was one of the vehicles that fell into to the chasm. Fikes said she and her daughter had stopped by the restaurant just minutes earlier when it happened. “We’d been in there about three minutes,” Fikes said when they suddenly heard a “boom”.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/09/giant-hole-swallows-12-vehicles-in-mississippi-resturant-parking-lot