There was an unusual sight in Brooklyn Tuesday when a sinkhole swallowed up part of an intersection just two blocks from the busy Gowanus Expressway. NY1's Michael Herzenberg filed the following report.
Concrete collapsed, leaving a sinkhole the size of some studio apartments at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 64th Street.
Up close, you can see why. City officials believe a water main break underground swept away the soil, leaving nothing to support the street.
One man drove up to the intersection before 7 a.m. and watched the ground give way to a pit 20 feet long, wide and deep.
"Sometime, I come this way. Lucky today, I don't know. Very nice no happen to me," the man said.
Others came outside of their homes after hearing about it on the news first.
"I think it's crazy that there's, like, a sinkhole on my block," said one person in the neighborhood. "I'm, like, Sunset Park, so I step outside and it's like, this is my block, and it's really scary."
City officials say the few buildings nearby were structurally sound and that natural gas from a nearby main did not leak, but utlity crews still had to cut services to the area, including water, while workers fixed the broken pipe and filled the hole with trucked-in dirt.
"First time I ever seen this," said one person in the area. "It's crazy."
Workers at a car dealership across the street say the hole swallowed their chances of making any new sales on this day.
"All our cars, we can't bring them in here. We have to leave them over there and deliver from over there," said one person at the car dealership.
Many people say they feel lucky that no one was injured. Businesses and residents say they are looking forward to things getting back to normal.