Sinkhole traps Los Angeles family on San Francisco street
SAN FRANCISCO -- A giant sinkhole swallowed part of a busy San Francisco street Tuesday night, trapping a Los Angeles family on vacation.
An Uber driver was in the wrong place at the wrong time, waiting for the light to change at Mission and New Montgomery streets when the incident happened. A family was inside the SUV and spoke to ABC7 about their terrifying ordeal.
The street will remain closed until Wednesday.
"The car go down right away so I don't know what happened," Uber driver Jose Santana said.
His passengers didn't know what happened either.
"We kind of thought it was a flat tire and then we saw all these people clicking videos and stuff and the cops came and they said, 'Just don't move,'" Radhika Achuthan said.
The family, visiting from L.A., didn't know how much danger they were in until they were safely out of the SUV.
"It was terrifying. We felt that it might completely go down," Ashok Narayanan said.
"It was so shocking to see that big, big hole there," Achuthan said.
The family had no choice but to shake it off and find another way to the airport to catch their flight home.
Passersby stopped and stared. Monica Berini captured video of the SUV being pulled to solid ground.
"It became kind of fascinating and interesting watching the firefighters pull the car out," Berini said.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission says a broken sewer line caused the sinkhole, a brick sewer main from 1875.
"Crews will clean it up and they'll reattach new pipe, make the street whole again and put the street and sewer back into service," said Charles Sheehan of the SFPUC.
The SFPUC says sewer service is not disrupted.
No injuries were reported.
