Vermont family lucky to be alive after their cars are swallowed up in 25 foot deep sinkhole

Another massive sinkhole opens up, this time swallowing two vehicles that this family were traveling in. The sinkhole opened up after heavy rains.

A Vermont family are lucky to be alive after a massive sinkhole opened up in the middle of a mountain road during a rainstorm, swallowing their two cars. Brian and Angel Richardson were driving up Mines Road in their hometown of Lowell early Saturday morning after picking up their son, Alex, from the airport, when the roadway caved in. Their two vehicles fell 5 feet straight down, but the Richardsons managed to climb out to safety just before the ground gave way and their cars sank another 20 feet.

By the looks of these vehicles, they are very lucky to have escaped unharmed.



Here's a good shot of how this road gave way.





Family lucky to have escaped massive sinkhole

How scary that must have been. They are lucky they got out before the bigger fall. That would have been a terrifying ride!

Another bleeding SINKHOKLE!?

Here we can see a list of some of the major ones of the decade (+3)

Something's gotta give -or, not- rather.

Sinkholes usually show up in stretch zones, seismically speaking. If that were the case, then perhaps the West, TX Explosion was earthquake related, and then this sinkhole could have opened up in response to the plate adjustment. Just me thinking out loud...

Holy Grand Canyons Batman! That's not a sinkhole, that's an Abyss! I'd have lost my whole tractor trailer into that monster!

This is getting entirely out of hand when they have it happening on roadways. I saw survey trucks across Arizona and Indiana with sensor units hanging behind them on frames and asked them once what they were for. They were imaging the ground beneath the roadbed to look for voids. They said potholes before they became one ...but I've wondered since if potholes were far too small for what their equipment was meant to detect. Perhaps these wasted trillions going to everything worthless these days can spare a few bucks for a few hundred more of those survey trucks to really predict these and not wait for cars to be swallowed before first realizing there might be an issue.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Not a bad idea. With all the heavy rains across the US in recent weeks, there are sure to be more of these situations in addition to the many sinkholes that were already being reported.

It doesn't look like a sinkhole. The article states it was raining and it looks a lot more like a damaged drain under the construted road. The water leaking by the drain caused a collapse because dirt/sand loses its strutural integrity when adding to much water, especially when it is and keeps flowing.

The drainage seen on the picture is damaged but that could have happened in the collapse to, but what it does show us there is a flow of water there. As there are no fences to prevent animals on the road it is unlikely that the drainage is just a tunnel for animals.

EDIT to say: If you look at the 5th picture in the link it looks more like a damaged dike then a hole in the ground.

reply to post by Dumbass


The cause is attributed to heavy rains which is essentially what you're saying...either way, it's a major washout!

I agree that it was most likely caused by a leaky drainage pipe that had been leaking for a long time. The recent rains were probably the straw that broke the camel's back.

There were also sinkholes reported recently in Illinois, Florida, and Wisconsin.

Sinkholes an Ongoing Problem

Florida Sinkhole

Chicago Sinkhole

Certainly, some of these must be caused by deteriorating infrastructure?