“The vast majority of any sort of water system failure, due to our soils here, will pop up to the surface and we can quickly identify it,” he said.

“But. this one actually broke the sanitary service for one of our customers and the water was traveling down the sanitary system, so no one really spotted it for a good two to three days.”

Campbell explained further.

“It was an old clay tile riser that, for whatever reason, the water kind of broke it away and then a swirling effect sort of happened underneath the roadway where all the soil underneath the road then washed down the sewer. For whatever reason, the sewer never plugged, the person whose service I think broke never seemed to notice that their water service or sanitary service wasn’t running properly.”

He said that a few people in the neighborhood apparently heard water running, but the connection to a service failure underneath the street was never made.

“What we were left with was a void, probably the size of a car,” Campbell said, referring to the sinkhole.

CITY RESPONSE

Once the report came in and the City was made aware of the situation, crews made their way to the scene, blocked off the affected road and turned off the watermain to prevent further damage.

Once that was done, they informed residents of the situation. Campbell said all residents along the block should have running water again by the end of the day, Tuesday.

A safety barrier set up around the sinkhole (Lethbridge News Now)

As far as the damaged road, he said fixes are ongoing.

“We have a couple of emergency situations across the city going on and typically, when you lay down hot mix asphalt, it needs to cool for a half day or a day, so it should be reopened in a day or two.”

He said the main goal is to make water available to residents first, and then focus on the road repair.

“I would imagine there’s twenty or thirty houses without water on that block and that will be our top priority, is getting them back on water,” he noted.

“Any time we have a watermain leak, our goal is to get everyone back on water within 24 hours, which basically means by the end of the day.”

A RARE OCCURRENCE

Campbell said in general, Lethbridge never experiences sinkholes.

“In Lethbridge, it’s very rare. This is a rather strange occurrence.”

Campbell is asking residents that if they suspect anything is to wrong, to call the City via 311, so a crew can be dispatched to survey the scene.

“That water’s probably been running a long time, and if we would have caught it beforehand, it would have been less of a safety risk to the public,” he said.

A closer look inside the sinkhole (Lethbridge News Now)

“In general, the roads are safe and when we have any sort of system failure, people tend to notice quite quickly, and we will come repair it.”

He said this system failure didn’t happen overnight and built up over time.

“It’s very rare and it’s because it went unchecked.”

He couldn’t confirm this, but Campbell said he was informed that there was initially a very small hole in the road and when a bus drove over it, all the asphalt “sort of fell into the hole”.

Fortunately, there have been no reports of injuries or damages to vehicles in the area.

“No one was directly impacted, but it could have been a lot worse. That’s why I ask if people notice anything out of the ordinary to please call in to 311 and we’d be happy to go look at it because I’d hate for someone to actually lose a car or fall into that.”