Fears are growing for the health and safety of a truck driver who has now spent almost four days trapped in a sinkhole in Japan, after the road opened up and swallowed the truck he was driving.
The 74-year-old driver, who has not been identified, first became trapped in the sinkhole when it opened up in a busy intersection in Yashimo City, just outside Tokyo, on Tuesday morning.
He was conscious and communicating with rescue workers earlier but hasn’t responded since Tuesday afternoon, according to Yashio fire department official Yoshifumi Hashiguchi.
Rescue crews have been working around the clock to the reach the man. They were able to retrieve the truck bed from the sinkhole, but the cabin of the truck remains buried under debris and soil.
First responders try to rescue the driver of a truck that fell into a sinkhole on a street in Yashio, northeast of Tokyo, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025.
Kenichiro Kojima / Kyodo News via AP
When it first formed, the sinkhole was about the size of a swimming pool and approximately 33 feet wide and 20 feet deep. But unstable ground, leaking water pipes and loose debris have caused the hole to grow about four times in width, local officials say.
“The inside is gouging and it’s getting bigger every day,” an official from Saitama Prefecture’s Sewerage Works Division told CNN.
It’s believed the hole was caused by the rupture of an underground sewage pipe. Wastewater from the damaged pipe has flooded the hole, causing a second sinkhole to appear on Thursday.
According to The Guardian, crews are now switching tactics, and have begun building a 30-metre-long ramp that they hope will allow them to reach the man.
“We are planning to construct a slope from a safer spot so that we will be able to send down heavy equipment,” local fire chief, Tetsuji Sato, told the outlet, calling the operation around the sinkhole “extremely dangerous.”
Firefighters work to rescue a truck driver after his vehicle was swallowed up by a sinkhole at a prefectural road intersection, in the city of Yashio, Saitama Prefecture on January 28, 2025.
Jiji Press / AFP via Getty Images
Meanwhile, the ground has become so unstable in the area that residents living in approximately 200 nearby homes have been ordered to evacuate, and 1.2 million people in the area have been asked to cut back on water consumption, to prevent more leaking sewage water from entering the hole.
According to local news outlet Kyodo, once the ramp is complete, heavy equipment will be driven into the hole to clear out some of the debris and rescue workers will then be able to enter the sinkhole to continue their search.
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When the driver is taken out, experts will enter the sinkhole and inspect the sewage system.
The Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry has ordered a nationwide inspection of sewer systems. In one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, the sinkhole has raised worries about aging infrastructure.
Most of Japan’s main public infrastructure was built during the rapid economic growth of the 1960s and 1970s. The sewage pipe in Yashiro is about 40 years old.
— With a file from The Associated Press