The sinkhole is estimated to be about 32 feet wide and 16 feet deep.
Massive sinkhole opens on a road in Japan
A massive sinkhole opened on a road in Japan’s Saitama Prefecture. Rescue efforts are underway a truck that fell into the sinkhole.
A sinkhole estimated to be the size of a large swimming pool swallowed a truck and its driver as it opened up in the middle of a busy intersection in Japan, according to multiple reports citing the country’s officials.
The crater, which reached about 32 feet wide and 16 feet deep, popped up in Yashio City on Monday around 10 a.m. (8 p.m. ET), Motohiro Ono, the governor of Saitama Prefecture said during a news briefing on Tuesday, NBC News reported.
Yashio City authorities received calls around 9:50 a.m. about the road being caved in and the truck falling inside of it, according to CBS News.
“We have been carrying out a rescue operation ever since,” a fire department spokesperson told the outlet around seven hours later. “Now, we’re trying to see if we can pull up the truck using a large crane. There is (the) risk that the hole will collapse.”
Saitama Prefecture is part of the Greater Tokyo area.
Watch sinkhole swallow truck in Japan
Truck driver remains trapped in sinkhole
Even eight hours following the collapse, the man remained trapped inside his truck due to the driver’s seat being filled with sand and mud, Nippon TV station reported. Throughout the rescue process, emergency responders were pumping air into the large hole to deliver the driver oxygen, the Japanese outlet said.
The driver could still communicate with rescuers around 1 p.m., but the responders retreated from the crater after the area around the hole became unstable, the fire department spokesperson told CBS News. Yashio City Police told NHK, a Japanese public broadcaster, that the investigation into the sinkhole is ongoing and that rescuers have not been able to speak with the trapper truck driver.
How was the sinkhole created?
During the news conference on Tuesday, Ono said he thought the sinkhole may have been caused by a “crack in the Nakagawa River Basin sewer pipe,” NBC News reported.
According to government officials in Saitama Prefecture, the collapse may have happened due to a heavily corroded sewage pipe that runs 10 meters underground, the Mainichi Shimbun, a Japanese publication, reported. The belief is that surrounding sediment flowed into the pipe and created a hollow space under the road, which was unable to hold up the weight as vehicles passed, the outlet added.
Jonathan Limehouse covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at JLimehouse@gannett.com.
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