Brooklyn Neighborhood Sees City’s Largest Pothole

A massive sinkhole opened up in Brooklyn on Wednesday, nearly swallowing a parked car and causing a giant headache for city workers, who plan to work through the weekend to repair it.

The 20-foot-deep by 20-foot-wide hole formed at around 6 p.m. in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. A woman and her mother had just parked their car when the sinkhole appeared, leaving the vehicle teetering on the sinkhole’s edge.

“We’re so blessed,” Maddie Flood told 1010-WINS radio. “If we were five minutes later or anything, we could have been in the hole.” Their car was eventually pulled away from the hole.

New York’s Department of Environmental Protection said the sinkhole was caused by a sewer main break.

Sinkholes, while unusual for New York City, are common elsewhere.

Just last month in Colorado, a giant sinkhole caused by an abandoned, century-old railroad tunnel caused part of a highway near the top of a mountain pass to be shut down. In May, sinkholes swallowed a pair of backyards in two Florida neighborhoods.

But, as New York magazine points out, a 60-foot sinkhole opened up in the same section of Brooklyn in June. Eleven families were evacuated from their homes.