Downtown sinkhole repaired
Published 11:32 pm Friday, July 12, 2013
After nearly three months of being closed, the drive-through teller at downtown Suffolk’s SunTrust is back in use after a sinkhole in the drive-through lane was repaired.
The sinkhole first became visible in the second week of April. Bank officials looked down into what was initially thought a run-of-the-mill pothole and could see several feet down. A worker went into a nearby manhole and reported the caved-in subsurface extended far beyond what could be seen from above the road.
The drive-through has been closed ever since, and repair work got going a couple weeks ago.
“They found another big air pocket, so all of that had to be filled in,” branch manager Gail Williams said.
The workers told her the cause of the sinkhole was an old, brick storm drain that had crumbled, Williams said. An underground whirlpool had contributed by washing dirt away little by little.
“It was about a 60-foot-long area that was compromised,” she said.
The area was filled in with gravel and dirt. Fortunately, the damage did not extend under the teller’s building.
“It came about five feet from the corner of it,” she said.
Williams said the underground damage extends under neighboring properties as well as the sidewalk. The other owners and the city have been notified, she said.
No one was injured in April when the sinkhole originally opened up. The bank barricaded the entire area to prevent anyone from driving or walking across it.