A PORTION of a busy road in the nation’s capital caved in, leaving a hole dozens of metres deep that forced people to evacuate and drew a visit from the prime minister.
Just outside a local police station and Vajira Hospital in a residential district of Bangkok, a roughly 50m hole pulled down power lines and exposed a burst pipe gushing water yesterday, AFP journalists saw.
Suriyachai Rawiwan, director of Bangkok’s disaster prevention department, said at the scene that the collapse was likely linked to heavy rain and a leaky pipe that eroded earth under the road.
“The water that eroded brought some soil that dropped down to an under-construction subway station, causing the collapse,” he said, adding that there were no known casualties.
The tunnel is part of an underground service being built by the state-run Mass Rapid Transit Authority, which said it would probe the cause of the cave-in.
Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul visited the site, telling reporters he was “concerned” and had ordered people at risk to be moved out of the area.
He also said he expected repairs to the collapsed subway tunnel to take about a year, local media reported.
Suriyachai also said the local police station facing the collapsed road was evacuated.
Officers from the station later set up a temporary base about 2.4km from the site.
Dozens of police and city officials cordoned off the sinkhole, while a pickup truck teetered precariously on its edge.
Emergency workers using a vehicle-size harness and crane later removed the vehicle from the precipice, but at least one truck fell into the hole as the street sank in, local media reported.
“The location is at a station, and the soil was sucked into the site... it collapsed,” Bangkok governor Chadchart Sittipunt said earlier. — AFP
