Truck cabin found in Japan sinkhole search for driver

A truck cabin swallowed by a sinkhole in Japan has been found in a sewer pipe and may contain the body of its missing driver, a fire department official said Wednesday.

Rescuers have been struggling to find the 74-year-old driver since the truck plunged into a chasm that appeared near Tokyo two weeks ago.

The sinkhole suddenly opened up at an intersection in the city of Yashio during morning rush hour on January 28, swallowing the lorry.

"After experts analysed photos taken with a drone... they said there's a cabin of a truck in the photos and they can't rule out the possibility that what appears to be inside is a person," local fire department official Tomonori Nakazawa told AFP.

But rescuers could not enter the sewer pipe where the truck cabin was spotted due to water flow and high levels of hydrogen sulfide gas, he said.

Governor Motohiro Ono of Saitama prefecture, where Yashio is located, said it will take about three months to build a temporary bypass pipe to stop water flow.

Rescuers must now wait for the completion of the bypass before accessing the truck cabin, he told reporters late Tuesday.

A 30-metre (98-foot) slope had allowed rescuers to send heavy equipment into the hole, with 1.2 million residents asked to temporarily cut back on showers and laundry to prevent leaking sewage from hindering the operation.

But a good amount of sewage water was discovered underneath the slope, which, combined with rain, led to the rescue mission being suspended.

On Sunday, the search inside the sinkhole was called off to focus on the nearby sewer pipe where the truck's cabin was spotted, Kyodo News and other outlets reported.

Around 2,600 cases of road sinkholes in 2022 were caused by sewer pipes, according to local media. Most were small, at only 50 centimetres (20 inches) deep or less.

In 2016, a giant sinkhole around 30 meters wide and 15 meters deep appeared on a busy street in Fukuoka city, triggered by nearby subway construction.

No one was hurt and the street reopened a week after workers toiled around the clock.

© Agence France-Presse