Giant sinkhole has made me and my kids homeless

A GIANT sinkhole is threatening to eat up Sarah Lewis’s family home in Godstone, Surrey. It’s a surreal situation, to say the least. Last Friday, she was allowed to pay a flying visit to the three-bedroom property to collect some essentials – clothes, toiletries, clean towels – after being evacuated the previous week.

Image Credit: The Sun [Resident stands near a "Footway Closed" sign at a construction site.]

And she had to be quick about it, as the sinkhole is growing by the day. Shortly before midnight on Monday last week, startled residents were woken by police banging on doors telling them to leave immediately. When they peered outside, it looked like they’d been transported to the set of a disaster movie.

Image Credit: The Sun [Aerial view of a large sinkhole in a road, surrounded by barriers and construction workers.]

On one side of the High Street, a jet of water was shooting up through the air. On the other, a giant black chasm had opened up. Sarah, an IT architect and her sales director partner, both 36, and their two daughters, aged four and six, live on William Way, an attractive courtyard development just a few feet from where the sinkhole sprang up.

Image Credit: The Sun [Aerial view of a large sinkhole in a residential area, surrounded by emergency personnel.]

Built in 2019, it is made up of eight terraced houses and ten flats. But all of its properties have been evacuated – as well as eleven more homes on and around the High Street. When the drama unfolded, Sarah and her family were at the other end of the country, in South Yorkshire, preparing to attend a funeral.

Image Credit: The Sun [Woman standing near a road closure.]

“We were in Barnsley to attend the funeral of my grandfather’s partner,” says Sarah, who has lived at the address since 2020. “We were asleep when our Ring bell went off. It was a neighbour. “‘There’s a big sinkhole, the police are saying you need to evacuate’, she said.

Image Credit: The Sun [Aerial view of a large sinkhole in a residential street.]

“The next day, at the funeral, I was worrying constantly. I was on Whatsapp to neighbours, trying to see how bad it was. “I felt quite panicked, being so far away. I was worried about the house and how all this would upset my family, my daughters. “The sinkhole was growing and growing.”.

Image Credit: The Sun [Aerial view of sinkholes in a residential street, surrounded by barriers and emergency vehicles.]

Sarah and her family are currently camping out in a tiny Airbnb flat above a shop a few miles away after being evacuated. “I’m stressed,” says Sarah. “There’s black mould in the bathroom, the towels are stained, the floor’s not clean, there’s no parking.

“But we’re trying to take the positive. It’s a roof above our heads.”. The sinkhole in this quaint Surrey village is currently a staggering 65ft long and filled with water. A second smaller one, on the opposite side of the street, has swallowed up part of someone’s driveway.

The High Street is closed off and investigations are ongoing. From time to time, a stream of muddy water courses down the road. What’s happening in Godstone may sound fantastical, but sinkholes are far from rare. There are “thousands” of natural sinkholes in the UK, according to Dr Andrew Farrant of the British Geological Survey.

And they have an unfortunate habit of striking in residential areas. In December, a massive sinkhole measuring about 16ft wide and 30-40ft deep suddenly manifested in a residential street near Merthyr Tydfil, Mid Glamorgan. In 2014, a sinkhole appeared in a garden in Bexleyheath, followed by another in a residential area of St Albans, Hertfordshire, in 2015.

And last October, a sinkhole on Church Street in Storrington, West Sussex, appeared to be no more than the size of a tennis ball – but the road was closed due to a 6ft x 6ft void beneath the hole. It was the fourth to strike Storrington in two years.

I feel like I’m letting my kids down. They’re OK, but asking when they can go home. They miss their comforts and sleeping in their own beds. Most terrifyingly, there have been incidents in which sinkholes have swallowed up people. Only last month, a sinkhole appeared during rush hour at a traffic intersection in the city of Yoshio, Japan, swallowing up a truck and its male driver.

And in December, a gran died after apparently falling into a sinkhole in Pennsylvania in the USA while searching for her cat. Sarah says her home insurer initially refused to pay for temporary accommodation, but then relented, agreeing to pay for seven nights, at £130 per night, which will then be reviewed.

“My insurer didn’t want to help at the beginning,” she says. “But I called them back last Wednesday when it was all over the news and said: ‘Are you sure you don’t want to help us?’. “They went to their technical team and underwriters and said they would arrange an Airbnb for seven days.

“If they don’t agree to continue the arrangement, we’ll be homeless. “Our mortgage is just under £1600 a month and our lender has told us they can’t freeze the mortgage because they don’t yet know the severity of the situation. “We can’t afford to pay for temporary accommodation ourselves. The council is putting some people up in the Travelodge, but that’s not suitable for a family with two children.”.

There are thousands of natural sinkholes, also known as dolines, in the UK, particularly in the upland areas of northern England, according to the British Geological Survey. By and large, these are not actively subsiding, but occasionally new sinkholes form, particularly after heavy rain.