BROCKTON, MASS. (WHDH) - The pavement underneath a dump truck gave way in Brockton Tuesday evening.
Emergency crews arriving at the scene off Elm Street found the truck partially swallowed up by the 20-foot by 40-foot hole and sticking straight up in the air, according to photos provided by the Brockton Department of Public Works.
The driver was uninjured in the accident and a crane was called to remove the truck.
“He just crawled out. It was just looking up into the air, he just had to step out,” one coworker said.
The parking lot was built over a river more than a century ago and the fully loaded dump truck mistakenly drove over the culvert causing it to collapse, according to the DPW commissioner.
“Everyone drives over these all the time, they are in the street, it’s in the parking lot here, it is an old culvert, put in in the late 1800s, nearly 1900s and it has just aged,” he said.
The DPW crew was performing work on the sewers on the other side of the lot at the time of the incident.
Road plates have been used to cover the hole until a more permanent solution can be implemented.
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