A lorry was swallowed at an intersection near Tokyo during morning rush hour last month. At least one person’s remains could be inside a truck cabin swallowed by a sinkhole in Japan and found inside a sewer pipe after two weeks of search, a fire department official said on Wednesday. The body of a truck’s missing 74-year-old driver could be inside the cabin that got sucked into a chasm near Tokyo, officials said, confirming that drone images have captured what is likely a “person”. The truck slipped into the sinkhole two weeks ago near the Japanese capital city.
It is unclear if the body is that of the missing driver. "After experts analysed photos taken with a drone, they said there's a cabin of a truck in the photos and they can't rule out the possibility that what appears to be inside is a person," local fire department official Tomonori Nakazawa said, reported AFP. A lorry was swallowed after the sinkhole surfaced at an intersection in the city of Yashio during morning rush hour on 28 January.
The sinkhole is now 40m (131ft) in diameter, officials said. It is believed to be caused by a sewer rupture. The rescuers were able to pull out the truck's loading platform from the sinkhole but were unable to reach the cabin which had the driver. The Mainichi reported that sediment likely flowed into the heavily corroded pipe, laid about 33ft underground, creating a hollow beneath the road, which collapsed under the weight of passing vehicles.
Nearly 30 hours after the collapse, the driver remained trapped in the vehicle as sand and mud filled his seat, according to Japan’s Nippon TV. Rescue workers initially heard the driver responding to their calls, but soon lost contact. However, rescuers were unable to enter the 5m-wide sewer pipe where the truck cabin was last seen due to the continuous water flow and high levels of hydrogen sulphide gas, Mr Nakazawa said. The sinkhole was initially sized at 10m wide and 5m deep.
However, it merged with another nearby sinkhole and has since quadrupled in size. The efforts to rescue the man had to be suspended as further cave-ins at the sinkhole made the area highly unstable. The authorities called off the search inside the sinkhole on Sunday to focus on the nearby sewer pipe where the truck's cabin was spotted, reported Kyodo News. It will take at least three months to build a temporary bypass pipe to stop the water flow, according to governor Motohiro Ono of Saitama prefecture.
The rescue team will have to wait for the completion of the bypass before moving in to access the truck cabin, he said on Tuesday. Five families living in the vicinity of a sinkhole in Japan have been told to evacuate as the crater continued to expand, days after swallowing a truck along with its driver. More than a hundred residents living within a 50m radius of the hole had already been moved out in the week incident took place.
