A giant sinkhole swallowed a stretch of street on Mexico City's east side, with one man feared killed and 30 families evacuated, authorities said on Monday.
Even in a city where historic buildings regularly lean, crack, collapse or sink below sidewalk level due to excessive water extraction and unstable soil, the 14m-deep sinkhole -- which measures about 15m in diameter -- came as a shock.
It began as a giant crack late on Saturday in the eastern Iztapalapa borough and rapidly worsened; the ground simply collapsed, swallowing a car, the facade of a one-story brick building and pavement.
A young man who was watching the spectacle also fell in on Saturday, and emergency workers were digging with hand tools to try to recover his body, authorities said.
His age was not immediately known.
"The truth is that it is very highly unlikely" that the victim could still be found alive, Mexico City Civil Defense Secretary Elias Moreno said. "But as long as that possibility exists, we are digging very carefully to avoid hurting him if he is alive."
Fissures from the sinkhole extend outward for about 500m, raising the danger of additional collapses. Thirty families whose homes lie near those cracks have been taken to shelters prepared by city authorities.
Moreno said there were about 200 more cracks, fissures and sinkholes in Iztapalapa, which authorities are trying to fill with cement.
He blamed them on the city's triple problem of earthquakes, which cause cracks to appear; the excessive extraction of ground water, which causes sinking, and torrential rains, which make surface soil more likely to collapse.
"All these factors came together to create these problems we have," Moreno said.
Mexico City gets about two-thirds of its drinking water from wells, and the city sinks an average of 7cm to 10cm each year.
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