Japan rescuers are trying to remove a truck driver from a abyss that appeared on Tuesday and has been widened.
The chasm appeared in the city of Yashio in the prefecture of Saitama, near the capital Tokyo, swallowing a truck.
The rescue efforts were led by road collapses and the officials ordered dozens of households in the region to evacuate their homes.
The 74-year-old driver was heard for the last time by responding to rescuers on Tuesday afternoon, according to local media.
While the emergency teams have managed to remove the truck bed from the abuse of the size of a swimming pool, the driver’s cabin remains buried underground and debris.
The hole measuring about 10 m (33 feet) wide and 5 m deep appeared for the first time Tuesday morning at a junction on the road.
It is believed that it was caused by an underground wastewater rupture.
The officials said that, while the wastewater from the damaged pipe flooded the hole, he had a second abyss appeared on Thursday.
Video sequences have shown a floor lamp and a restaurant panel falling into this collapse.
The road then collapsed, merging the two chasms to become a crater 20 meters wide, further complicating the rescue operation.
The massive abyss also contains a gas pipeline, which encourages fears to a potential leak. Officials issued evacuation orders for 200 households in the surroundings.
They also urged residents in and around the city to use less water.
The range wells are increasingly common in Japanese cities, because many have an aging waste pipeline infrastructure.
In 2016, a giant abyss in Fukuoka swallowed a five -way street in Fukuoka, disturbing power, water and transport. No serious injury has been reported.
Last August, a search for a woman who disappeared in a chassed abyss in downtown Kuala Lumpur was canceled after a week. The authorities have considered it “too risky” to continue deploying divers in the underground sewer network, which had solid currents and hard debris.
