Sinkholes are as scary as they are unpredictable. They eat absolutely anything, regardless of rarity, or size, or purpose, and can be hellaciously deep. Needless to say, a recent viral video of a Hyundai being singled out by the earth shows just how dicey mother nature can be.
Over the weekend, a pint-sized Hyundai Venue in India was the latest victim to be reclaimed by the Earth. The pavement below gave way and a Hyundai-sized hole swallowed just the blue crossover, leaving the surrounding vehicles untouched and the internet in an uproar over how oddly specific the ground’s selection was.
It happened around 8:30 a.m. on Sunday in the parking lot outside of a housing structure in Mumbai, India. The concrete slab underneath 67-year-old Dr. Kiran Doshi’s Hyundai Venue began to give way, and the man responsible for washing residents’ cars took notice.
According to The Indian Express, the car washer alerted Doshi’s son, who used the vehicle while his father worked, that the pavement was caving in underneath the Hyundai, but it soon took a nose-dive into the ground. Doshi couldn’t do anything except film the bizarre event. Less than a minute later, his car quickly slipped into the watery abyss and disappeared. Fortunately, the vehicle was unoccupied at the time of the incident.
As it turns out, the spot where the vehicle was parked happened to be positioned above an old well. The well, which is between 30 and 40 feet deep, was built along with the residential complex about 80 years ago. Half of the well was left open, while the other half had been covered with the reinforced concrete slab about 40 years ago—the area now used by residents to park their vehicles.
Mumbai’s governing civic body, called Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), blamed “very heavy rain” in the area for the concrete buckling. And because the incident occurred on private property, BMC deferred responsibility of the concrete’s upkeep to the landowners.
Police and rescue crews worked for 12 hours to recover the sunken Hyundai. Submersible pumps were used to drain the water from the well and when the water level was low enough, a crane was used to extract the devoured crossover. By nightfall, the vehicle had been recovered from the underground mole people…er…sinkhole.
While this was the first time such an event has happened with the concrete at the residential complex, authorities aren’t taking any chances of it happening again. BMC has since asked the property owners to take safety measures to prevent a repeat of the event in the future. The internet, as per usual, has offered a bit more lighthearted advice. Even the chairman of the Mahindra Group joked that the clip of the sinking Hyundai needed a burp at the end.
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