Japan: Missing truck cabin located in sewer pipe near Saitama sinkhole
The missing cabin of a truck swallowed by a huge sinkhole that emerged at an intersection in Yashio, north of Tokyo, was located in a sewer pipe nearby, local officials said Tuesday, Kyodo reports.
A search of the sewer pipe near the site in Saitama Prefecture using a drone found the truck cabin about 30 meters downstream of the sinkhole, prefectural officials said.
Images taken by the drone suggest a human body inside the truck cabin, but rescuers cannot enter the pipe due to continuous water flow and high levels of hydrogen sulfide gas in the nearly 5-meter-diameter pipe, officials said.
Saitama Gov. Motohiro Ono told reporters that rescuers will attempt to remove the truck cabin after installing a temporary bypass pipe, but the process could take about three months.
The sinkhole, which emerged on Jan. 28, swallowed the truck of a 74-year-old driver and eventually expanded to about 40 meters wide and 15 meters deep.
Rescuers built a ramp into the sinkhole to clear mud and rubble with heavy machinery, but the search inside was called off.
As earlier reported, firefighters said they had ended last Sunday their search inside a sinkhole near Tokyo for a man whose truck had been swallowed by it nearly two weeks before, with attention set to switch to an underground sewage pipe.
