Police and first responders in Japan’s Saitama Prefecture struggled on Thursday to rescue a truck driver who became trapped in a gigantic sinkhole three days ago.
The 74-year-old driver, whose name has not been released to the public, was stopped at an intersection in the city of Yashio, north of Tokyo, on Tuesday morning when a sinkhole measuring over 30 feet wide and 15 feet deep opened beneath his truck. The vehicle fell into the hole, trapping the driver inside.
Local officials said the sinkhole appears to have been created by a ruptured pipe that leaked sewage water underneath the road. A second sinkhole soon appeared nearby, then merged with the first, making the driver’s plight even more perilous.
Fear of further road collapses greatly hindered rescue efforts, as did the huge amounts of mud seeping around the trapped vehicle. Emergency crews were able to pull the truck bed out with a crane, but the cab and driver were buried in mud and debris at the center of a crater that grew to more than 65 feet in diameter.
Further complicating rescue efforts was the presence of a gas pipeline near the sinkhole. City officials ordered some two hundred homes in the area to evacuate, and cautioned a million other residents of Yashio to use as little water as possible, fearing contamination.
Buried fiber optic internet and telephone lines have been broken by the sinkholes, leaving hundreds of homes and businesses in Yashio without internet connectivity or telephone services.
The truck driver was alive and responding to rescue workers when his vehicle fell into the sinkhole, but he stopped responding a few hours later when a mudslide buried the truck’s cabin. His status as of Thursday morning was unknown.
“The situation is extremely dangerous, and we can’t send many rescuers. We will try to rescue him as soon as possible,” a fire department official said on Thursday.
Saitama Prefecture officials said on Thursday that they have been disinfecting water from the sinkhole with chlorine and pumping it to a nearby river, which is not part of the city’s tap water supply. The discharge effort began late on Wednesday night. Further wastewater discharges into two other rivers are in the planning stages.
Drones and a ground-penetrating radar system were brought to bear on Wednesday night, but rescue workers had to back off when more of the sinkhole collapsed. After cutting local power lines for safety, the crews resumed work on Thursday morning.
Japan has suffered from a growing number of road collapses due to aging infrastructure, with many buried pipes beginning to fail as they exceed their 50-year projected lifespan.
Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Keiichiro Tachibana announced at a news conference on Wednesday that the national government will examine thirteen locations across Japan for potential pipeline problems that could cause sinkhole disasters. Some of those locations are in Tokyo.
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