Huge 25ft-wide sinkhole forces evacuation of three homes in Ripon after spate of incidents in south-east

Yet another sinkhole has opened up forcing three homes to be evacuated in a suburban close in Ripon, North Yorkshire. It is the ninth sinkhole to appear in England over the past month, and the first in the recent spate outside the south-east.



Police evacuated the properties on Magdalen’s Close after a sinkhole caused the rear extension to one of the homes to fall away from the rest of the house.

The homeowner Peter Cunningham said he could not open the backdoor when he and his wife, Susan, returned home last night. “I looked up at the wall and there’s a big crack at the side of the back door. I thought that’s not right,” he told Sky News.



“Then I could hear it coming away above my head. It’s like being in a nightmare. I could see the house opening up,” he said.



Susan Cunningham said the couple had not been allowed back to the house. “We’ve only seen it on TV. They are not letting us any where near it.”

Fire crews rescued the Cunningham’s dog last night. Two other houses had to be evacuated after the 25ft-wide (7.6 metre) crater suddenly appeared.

A team from the British Geological Survey [BGS] is on its way to inspect the site. It said there had been almost a five-fold increase in reports of sinkholes since the winter storms began.

Dr Vanessa Banks BCS’s team leader for shallow geohazards and risks said the spate of recent incidents could be explained by the “increasing amount of moisture moving through the ground.”



She added: “A range of factors can trigger sinkhole collapse such as heavy rain or surface flooding.”



Last year, Dr Anthony Cooper, a principal geologist at BGS, said Ripon was particularly susceptible to sinkholes, with a history of similar incidents dating back to 1834 when a 65ft hole was recorded. In 1997, four garages collapsed into a huge sinkhole that only just missed a neighbouring house.

Cooper warned that sinkholes are likely to become more frequent as weather patterns involving drought followed by heavy rain become common.



Speaking to the Telegraph, he explained why so many sinkholes are opening up now: “When you get heavy rainfall the ground fills up with water, and groundwater levels rise. The area above where the sinkhole is develops buoyancy and as the hole beneath the ground drains out the covering materials become heavier, and eventually the support from the ground beneath and the water in the rocks is gone, and the land collapses.”

Eight other sinkholes to open up so far this month:



• On 2 February, a 30ft sinkhole opened up in a driveway in Walter’s Ash, near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and swallowed a Volkwagon Lupo. Phil Conran, said his teenage daughter, Zoe, had a narrow escape: “The car is on its side, its full of soil and she certainly, we don’t think, would have got out of it had she been in it, had she driven in and it had happened.”



• Last week, a 17ft-deep hole appeared next to a child’s trampoline in a back garden in Barnehurst, south-east London. Gretel Davidson, told This is Local London, that her 12-year-old daughter Mia discovered the hole. She said: “Mia rang me to say, ‘Mum there is a massive hole in the garden.’ It is just unbelievable to think a hole that size could appear overnight and out of nowhere.”

• 11 February: a 10-mile stretch of the M2, near Sittingbourne, in north Kent was closed after a 15ft hole appeared in the central reservation, near Sittingbourne. The AA’s president, Edmund King, blamed the wet weather. Two more sinkholes have since appeared within a mile of the central reservation crater, according to ITV.

• 12 February: a family car was left hovering over a gas pipe when a sinkhole opened up in a driveway in Upper Basildon, west of Reading. The home is near the site of a former brick yard.



• 14 February: a sinkhole appeared near the sports hall of Rainham Mark Grammar School, in Gillingham, Kent. Initial indications suggest it was triggered by drainage.



• 14 February: A second hole appeared in nearby Darland Avenue, Gillingham on a pitch used by the Anchorians Rugby Club.



• 15 February: 17 homes were evacuated when a 35ft-wide hole opened up in a cul-de-sac in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. Amateur video captured the extent of the damage.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Amateur footage shows a large sinkhole in Hemel Hempstead on Saturday. Seventeen homes were later evacuated

• On 16 February, a 20ft-deep chasm appeared in the back garden of a suburban home in Croxley Green, near Watford. A house and three flats were evacuated, the Watford Observer reported.