Utility truck gets stuck in sinkhole after water main break in SLO neighborhood
A water main broke in a San Luis Obispo suburb on Wednesday afternoon, flooding yards and opening up a sinkhole in the road that trapped a utility truck.
Water began spurting from the ground at the intersection of Calle Lupita and Calle Jazmin just before 3:50 p.m.
As residents made made dashes to protect their homes and garages from the flooding, water poured down the streets and attracted a mass of curious onlookers
Then at 4 p.m., a San Luis Obispo Public Works truck pulled up to investigate the issue.
As the truck drove down Calle Lupita, a sinkhole opened up underneath and trapped the vehicle.
Inside the truck, a Public Works employee could be heard calling for backup, saying, “I’m in a hole.”
The workers in the truck were able to get out and quickly began attempting to shut off the water that was now gushing from the sinkhole. In the meantime, local children splashed in the water as adults took photos and set up lawn chairs to watch the spectacle.
The water flow stopped just before 4:15 p.m. At that point, crews began attempting to remove the truck from the massive hole in the road.
A bulldozer was brought it and successfully lifted the truck enough that it could back out of the sinkhole to applause from onlookers.
San Luis Obispo utilities deputy director Mychal Boerman said the city did not yet know what caused the break, but said it was likely because the infrastructure is old.
A glance into the sinkhole after the truck was removed showed a large gaping space where the cast iron pipe should have been. A public works staff member on site said the pipes were installed in 1972 and that it looked like the line had exploded.
“We’ve got some aging infrastructure and sometimes they just break because of the earth settling or the pipes being older,” Boerman said. “We experience a handful of (breaks) every year.”
Boerman said about 10 to 15 water mains break a year in San Luis Obispo. He said “it is fairly common to have sinkholes, or what the public would call sinkholes, from water main breaks.”
Boerman estimated that about 10 customers lost access to water due to the break.
Workers spent the rest of the night fixing the gaping wound in the street, first vacuuming it out then replacing the pipe with a new one before filling the hole back in and covering it with a new layer of asphalt.
Water was restored to nearby residents by about 10 p.m.
This story was originally published November 2, 2022 at 5:23 PM.
