A lorry cabin swallowed by a sinkhole in Japan has been found in a sewer pipe and may contain the body of its missing driver, a fire department official said.
Rescuers have been struggling to find the 74-year-old driver since the lorry plunged into a chasm that appeared near Tokyo two weeks ago.
The sinkhole suddenly opened up at an intersection in the city of Yashio during morning rush hour on Jan 28, swallowing the lorry.
“After experts analysed photos taken with a drone... they said there’s a cabin of a lorry in the photos and they can’t rule out the possibility that what appears to be inside is a person,” local fire department official Tomonori Nakazawa said yesterday.
But rescuers could not enter the sewer pipe where the truck cabin was spotted due to water flow and high levels of hydrogen sulfide gas, he said.
Governor Motohiro Ono of Saitama prefecture, where Yashio is located, said it will take about three months to build a temporary bypass pipe to stop water flow.
Rescuers must now wait for the completion of the bypass before accessing the truck cabin, he told reporters late Tuesday. — AFP
