Two women have been rescued after tumbling into a sinkhole that opened up steps away from the main entrance of a department store in southern Ontario.
The sinkhole formed on Monday afternoon, swallowing a customer as she was headed into a Sears store in Kitchener, a city about 60 miles west of Toronto. The concrete appeared to cave in underneath her, witness Deanna Haddad told CTV News. “As she stepped in closer, she fell in to the hole.”
The gaping hole was blamed on a burst pipe that sent waves of brown water gushing across the parking lot and into the sinkhole.
The woman was left neck-deep in water, said Haddad. An employee from the store attempted to fish out the woman, but ended up also falling in.
Eventually both women were able to get out of the hole. “Wet and dirty,” said Haddad in describing the shopper. “Her phone was wet, her purse was wet, everything was just wet and dirty.”
The burst pipe also sent a torrent of water flowing through the front doors of the department store, flooding aisles and staining carpets.
Crews worked throughout the night to replace the broken pipe and repair the hole. “Our main efforts right now are concentrated on the safety of our customers and employees,” a spokesperson told CTV.
While the company said it didn’t know the exact size of the hole, video posted online by one local journalist suggested it roughly spanned the length of the store’s front doors.
Work continues on the sinkhole outside Sears at Fairview Mall pic.twitter.com/MxpwFlXObD
— Lindsay Grisebach (@LindzGrisebach) November 15, 2016
