Sinkhole in Gilbert

March 8, 2016

Sinkhole in Gilbert

It may have looked like a scene from an apocalypse movie as construction crews in Gilbert worked to determine what caused the road to collapse and form a hole that swallowed a pick-up truck last Monday night.

It happened on Greenfield Road between Queen Creek and Germann Roads… but are there more?

The driver of the truck, was able to get out on his own unharmed although the hole is 50 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 10 feet deep.

Crews worked through the night to remove the truck from the hole, and they continued working into the day to figure out why the ground opened up.

An expert said this is technically not a sinkhole, in the geological sense. The Phoenix basin doesn’t have the kind of rock conducive for sinkholes.

Still, a farm worker died two weeks ago when a hole opened up beneath him near Queen Creek. Cook said this wasn’t technically a sinkhole either but rather man-made causes from flood irrigation and saturation of the soil.

Nonetheless, these “sinkholes” have more than a few people anxious to drive on the roads

Crews have a lot of work before they can determine the cause of the road collapse. Crews are working on rerouting pipelines before they can excavate the hole, Alvarez said.