OTTAWA — After his car was swallowed by a sinkhole on Highway 174 Tuesday, Juan Pedro Unger’s first thought was simply, “I’m alive.” Then he realized that if he didn’t escape his car immediately, he risked being crushed by another vehicle.

Unger, 48, was behind the wheel of his 2009 Hyundai Accent on the eastbound Jeanne d’Arc off-ramp of 174 shortly after 5 p.m. Tuesday afternoon when he saw a black patch on the road.

At first he thought it was fresh pavement. As he got closer, he thought it may have been a tarpaulin.

“I stepped on the brakes but it was just too late,” Unger said. “The car went in nose first.”

First, the realization he was alive. Then, the fear of another driver following him into the sinkhole. “And then, the fear of sinking deeper, who knows to what point, and not being able to come up.”

Unger said he was underground for about 30 seconds before hearing voices shouting at him from above. He opened the driver’s side door, stepped on the car’s frame when he saw water flowing beneath him. He said he couldn’t tell how deep the water was or how far down the sinkhole went.

Unger said he quickly reached for the pavement above before two men grabbed his hands and pulled him out of the sinkhole.

Although he suffered only minor bumps and bruises from the bizarre incident, he collapsed on the ground.

“I’m alive. I’m on safe ground. It was a relief,” Unger said. “It sunk a bit more so I was lucky to get out when I did.”

Bystanders couldn’t believe Unger wasn’t seriously injured, and joked that he should buy a lottery ticket.

Instead of testing his luck again, he gladly took a ride home from a police officer.

Traffic was snarled on the eastbound 174 after police closed the highway from Montreal Road and Jeanne d’Arc Boulevard.

Barry Stevens was riding on a bus when he saw bystanders yelling into the sinkhole.

As the bus got closer, Stevens was stunned to see a car sticking out of the hole.

It looked like something out of a movie, he said. “It was a very fortunate thing in this case that there was no one tailgating because that would have done the person in, for sure,” Stevens said. “It had to happen just so quickly without any warning.”

Holly Bridges also witnessed the scene from a passing bus, seeing the flashing lights of emergency vehicles, then the car’s bumper sticking out of the sinkhole.

“It kind of made my heart stop because I thought that could have been my daughter,” Bridges said. “The thing that frightens me the most is how random is. It could be anybody.”

The City of Ottawa was called to the scene to repair the road, but it wasn’t immediately clear how long that would take.

Late Tuesday night a spokesman for the city was still unable to comment on the cause of the collapse. In an update sent to city councillors Tuesday night, however, Pierre Poirier, the city’s chief of security and emergency management, said that the vehicle involved in the incident had descended into a 3.6 meter-wide storm sewer pipe located beneath the sinkhole.

City workers were assessing how to retrieve the vehicle safely, and monitoring the rainfall and its potential effect on the site. Eastbound traffic on 174 continued to be diverted at Blair Road, while westbound traffic was not affected. The Traffic Incident Management Group and OC Transpo were preparing contingency plans for Wednesday morning’s commute.