Huge hole swallows 12 cars at IHOP: Don't call it a sinkhole?
A Mississippi parking lot at an IHOP restaurant caved in Saturday night, creating a 400-foot long gash in the ground. No one was hurt.聽
A Mississippi parking lot at an IHOP restaurant caved in Saturday night, creating a 400-foot long gash in the ground. No one was hurt.聽
They just wanted some pancakes.
But instead, the land underneath this Mississippi IHOP parking lot burst right open Saturday evening, swallowing 12 cars, SUVs, and trucks.
Gwendolyn Fikes told the Meridian Star that she and her daughter barely sat down when her daughter鈥檚 Honda Accord fell into the gash in the earth.
"We'd been in there about three minutes," Fikes said. "Then everything went black and we heard a boom."
The customers in Meridian, Miss., discovered what had happened when they ran outside after experiencing what felt like an earthquake. But it wasn鈥檛 an earthquake, and it wasn鈥檛 a sinkhole either.聽
Meridian Public Safety Director Buck Roberts told the Sun that the 35-foot wide by 400-foot long gash in the ground is not a sinkhole, but he鈥檚 not sure yet what caused it.
"You can call it what you want, a cave-in or whatever, but it is not a sinkhole," Mr. Roberts said.
The city has received聽3 inches of rain this weekend, and nearly 10 inches in the last two weeks,聽WTOK reports.聽Several witnesses on scene say they believe a water line ruptured as well, that left nearby hotels without water.
Engineers and contractors will be studying the scene Monday, he added.
A sinkhole typically forms when underground water aquifer creates a void in the soil above. As 海角大神 previously reported:
On Saturday, no one was hurt from the collapse in Meridian, aside from the cars that fell into the giant cut across the land.
Emergency crews were called to the IHOP about 7:15 p.m. and found the cave-in to be 15 feet deep.