Sinkhole in Las Cruces, NM swallowed two cars, forced residents to leave their homes

A large sinkhole in front of a New Mexico home has swallowed up two vehicles that were parked in the driveway and forced evacuations in an Las Cruces neighborhood where the incident occurred, the city of Las Cruces confirmed in a press release Tuesday.

The collapse was reported around 9:30 p.m. on Monday evening. Las Cruces firefighters arrived on scene and found a sinkhole 30-feet wide and 30-feet deep that had not yet settled.

No one was reported injured.

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Neighbors evacuated

To ensure the safety of nearby residents, firefighters evacuated people from homes near the sinkhole. Some members of the American Red Cross were deployed to support the family and their neighbors.

"I didn't feel or hear anything, but my parents did," Dorothy Wyckoff, who lives in a home across the street told The Las Cruces Sun News within the USA TODAY Network. "They said there was a loud rumbling and thought nothing of it. They didn't realize anything happened until I told them."

Neighbors were "in total shock and surprise" though, Wyckoff shared. "They thought it was an earthquake. They got evacuated," she said.

Electrical lines in the neighborhood were examined by El Paso Electric and utilities around the home secured by Las Cruces Utilities.

Until the cause of the sinkhole can be determined by City of Las Cruces engineers and the hole filled in, traffic will be limited on Regal Ridge Street where the incident took place.

What is a sinkhole?

According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), "a sinkhole is a depression in the ground that has no natural external surface drainage," so when it rains, the rainfall collects inside of the sinkhole.

"Regions where the types of rock below the land surface can naturally be dissolved by groundwater circulating through them," are hotbeds for sinkholes, the USGS states. Florida, Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania have the most, according to the American Geosciences Institute.

Sinkholes are usually undetectable for long periods of time until the space hollowed out underground grows too big to support movement on ground.