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” entered the home, which is now tilted at a precarious angle.

Rescuers have been calling the father’s cellphone; last night, they heard it ringing

inside the home, which now looks like this:

The house once looked like this:

Rescuers were first alerted to the disaster by a man who drove his truck into the sinkhole. He called for help on his cellphone and managed to walk away from the scene. He is being treated in hospital for non-life-threatening injuries. It took André Cartier more than an hour to pull himself out of his red pickup truck and climb up the edges of the enormous crater the landslide left in its wake. From the Montreal Gazette

:

“Bleeding from his head, face and legs, it had taken Cartier almost an hour to get out of his vehicle and drag himself out of the crater – estimated at 40 metres deep, 400 metres long and 600 metres wide – and make his way to Lanoie’s house. When Lanoie and his wife, Louise Leblanc, opened their door and saw Cartier standing there, they couldn’t imagine what had happened. Cartier, who is in his 60s, turned and pointed north on Rang Salvail. His first words weren’t about his injuries; they were a warning to others: ‘No one should go there! The road has disappeared! And a house has disappeared into it!'”

Officials say the damage is the result of a landslide, not a sinkhole and point out there is a difference between the two. Didier Terret, research scientist for the Geological Survey of Canada, said a landslide of this magnitude happens approximately one to two times per year in the St. Lawrence Valley, but normally in areas that have no infrastructure (smaller ones are more frequent and most of the time do not garner much attention).

Quebec ranks third in the world in terms of landslide-susceptible regions, according to Michel C. Doré, a spokesman.for Quebec’s civil security agency.

Back in 1971 , another major landslide destroyed part of Saint-Jean-Vianney

, Que., that

. More than three dozen homes were engulfed in the slide; 40 people died. According to