One end of a St. Louis firetruck was stuck in pavement up to its axle for about two hours this morning after a street partly collapsed.

It happened before 6 a.m. near Ninth and Wyoming streets, south of the Anheuser-Busch brewery.

The pumper truck and a medic unit had been in the 900 block of Withnell Avenue for a report of a 62-year-old man who collapsed on a sidewalk and died. St. Louis police say the man had no apparent signs of trauma, and a witness who knew him said he'd been in poor health recently. The case is being classified as a sudden death, not a homicide, police say.

The pumper was on its way back from that call when it got stuck in the sinkhole, said Capt. Garon Mosby of the St. Louis Fire Department. No one on the firetruck was injured in the incident.

An inspector with the St. Louis streets department examined the collapse and the pavement surrounding it to decide how to get the truck out. The obvious concern is that the sinkhole will get bigger as crews work to remove the truck.

"Sinkholes, they go small to big," Mosby said. "We basically have this truck sitting in a hole that's already started."