Yawning sinkhole shuts part of Rawdon's main road
An enormous sinkhole swallowed up a 15-metre-wide chunk of Rawdon's main street Tuesday morning, not far from the Lanaudière town's two local schools.
Firefighters in the municipality 80 kilometres north of Montreal say they were called to the site of the cave-in around 6 a.m.
Rawdon's fire chief, Bruno Jodoin, said the hole got bigger as more and more of the road collapsed over the course of about three hours and is now about 12 metres deep.
"I could have fallen right into the hole," said a relieved Mario Morency, who told CBC he drove home around midnight last night, before the cave-in occurred.
No one was driving over the site when the sinkhole opened up, however, Morency pointed out that school buses ply that road early in the morning.
Known 'hot spot'
The road is now cordoned off between 17th and 18th avenues, and a detour has been established.
Transports Québec and municipal officials spent the day at the scene, trying to decide on their next move.
Mayor Bruno Guilbault says work was done on that section of Queen Street in 2015 when it partly collapsed because of drainage issues. During the construction work, he said, it was discovered there was additional water damage to the roadbed caused by high water levels in the adjacent river.
In fact, Guilbault said, a call had already gone out for tenders to fix the road.
Town engineers were so concerned about that "hot spot," the mayor said, they were checking the roadbed three times a day — inspecting it for the last time at midnight Monday morning, just hours before the cave-in occurred.
'Not another one'
Last week, part of Route 341, also known as Pontbriand Boulevard in Rawdon, was closed after flooding caused part of that road to collapse.
This second cave-in has left some residents shaken up.
"Oh no, not another one," said Amanda Morley, a Rawdon resident whose son, Malcolm, attends nearby Rawdon Elementary School.
"There was the 25 and the Pontbriand. I was just thinking last week, 'I'm going to be driving around town, am I going to fall into a hole?'"
"When I saw this on the internet before, I was like, this is incredible."
