Wonder if this is one of the streets Mayor Healy said he fixed in his "Delivering Change we Can See" speech.

WoW, Any pictures out there of this? Please post!

TRUCK SUNK
Sinkhole traps fire engine, cuts off water

Monday, February 02, 2009
By CHARLES HACK
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

More than 125 Jersey City homes were left without water yesterday when a 33-ton Jersey City firetruck was swallowed by a sinkhole on Linden Avenue, officials said.

A crane had to be employed last night at 7:30 to hoist the ladder truck - stuck in the hole since 8:40 a.m. - out of the collapsed area, officials said.

Power was briefly shut off to residences on the south side of the street between Old Bergen Road and Ocean Avenue while the crane pulled the truck out, officials said. As of late last night, water service still hadn't been restored.

Water from a broken 8-inch main - that caused the basement of at least one Linden Avenue residence to flood - eroded the soil beneath the roadway and led to the sinkhole, said Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy, who was at the scene yesterday.

Tow trucks at the site yesterday afternoon couldn't pull the truck out since the back wheels couldn't clear part of the collapsed street and officials were also concerned about the truck clearing another 4-inch water main and a high pressure gas line.

Rosemary Canzano, 63, called firefighters to her house around 8:30 a.m. after finding her basement flooded.

Shortly after the firefighters entered her house, Canzano said she heard a loud bang. "It sounded like a tire blew," she said.

Canzano, along with the firefighters who were standing in two-foot deep water in her basement, ran outside to see what happened.

Canzano said the crack in the street at first appeared to be five feet wide. But it kept expanding - eventually stretching for 60 feet, forming a sort of underground cave, city officials said.

"The good news was that there were no fatalities and no injuries," Healy said.

Water tanker trucks were brought in to provide drinking water until the line can be fixed, said Richard Henning, a spokesman for United Water. He couldn't predict when the repairs would be completed.

Neighbors said the street had sunk and had been repaired several times before.