Car plunges head first into hole after driveway crumbles, swallowing Long Island woman

A 69-year-old Long Island woman was swallowed up by a hole in her home's driveway when the pavement crumbled beneath her car without warning.

"There was no sound. The car just slid into the ground," Gayle Sorrentino of Rockville Centre said of the frightful experience Friday afternoon.

"The car went in at like a straight angle," she described the estimated 15-foot head first plunge. "I pulled in looking at my beautiful backyard and then I was looking at a mound of dirt.

Incredibly the retiree, who was returning from an acupuncture appointment NBC reported and parking where she normally does, found herself uninjured but trapped.

Outside her windows she nervously watched as dirt steadily slid in around her making her fear that at any moment, it could get bigger.

Within minutes of her 911 call from her cell phone, the fire department was at the scene with a ladder at her side window, police confirmed.

By late Friday evening the immediate cause of the hole wasn't known. Police believe it is a cesspool and its top simply caved, said Rockville Officer Julie Grilli.

"It's very out of the norm," she told the Daily News. Grilli called it the first incident of its kind for the area.

As a precaution Sorrentino's driveway was cordoned off while sand was filled in.

As for her car, a white Subaru Outback, she exclaimed, "It looks perfectly fine!"

"They were able to drive it, down the driveway and park it on the street, so it's functional," she gushed. "It's like a little miracle."

Sorrentino, who described herself as standing straight up in the vertically-propped vehicle, was then safely able to climb out.

Edited February 22, 201412 yr by heartless

That's probably the 5th sink hole I've read about in the news in 2 weeks.

They are really rare here. If it happens, like this one, it is an old cesspool.