What would you do if the ground opens up and swallow your car? That's right – nothing. That's exactly what happened in what seems to be a parking lot in front of a shopping mall in China.
Caught by the country's state CCTV (embedded on top), a massive sinkhole opened up and devoured at least 21 cars. The disaster happened on the evening of August 19, 2020, Wednesday.
According to reports, 15 vehicles were recovered – most likely wrecked – from the site with zero casualties. Authorities in the country are still investigating the cause of the accident, but the current weather in the area could be the culprit.
The shopping mall is situated near the Yangtze River in Sichuan province. The province is experiencing torrential rainfalls, prompting the authorities to raise its emergency response to a maximum level.
Sinkholes have become a common occurrence in the past few years. This year alone, we've seen a number of sinkholes happening all over the world, damaging vehicles and causing injuries to their unsuspecting victims.
And these sinkholes aren't choosy about their victims. We've even seen one devour a Rolls-Royce back in 2017 in the middle of a busy highway in China.
Speaking of China, a quick Google search for 'sinkhole China' would yield several results of this incident in the People's Republic – a handful of which happening this year. One of the biggest of which was the sinkhole that swallowed an entire bus in China, taking along a number of pedestrians with it. Around 16 people were injured and 6 were deceased because of this incident.
It's still unclear what causes sinkholes from happening but one thing's for sure, they're a nightmare to anyone, especially when happening at places least expected.
