Skip to main content

VIDEO: A sinking feeling in Florence

Be careful where you park your car in Florence, Italy. Might be best to not leave your vehicle next to the River Arno. In this case, 20 drivers returned to their cars only to find them sitting in a 6.5m deep sinkhole next to the river. The ‘hole’ appeared after what media reports said was a water main burst that flooded the road’s substructure, dropping nearly 200m of pavement into rushing water from the ruptured pipe. Vehicles remained out of the river, thanks to a brick wall. Nobody was injured in the
May 27, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
Be careful where you park your car in Florence, Italy. Might be best to not leave your vehicle next to the River Arno.

In this case, 20 drivers returned to their cars only to find them sitting in a 6.5m deep sinkhole next to the river.

The ‘hole’ appeared after what media reports said was a water main burst that flooded the road’s substructure, dropping nearly 200m of pavement into rushing water from the ruptured pipe. Vehicles remained out of the river, thanks to a brick wall.

Nobody was injured in the collapse and emergency crews quickly began the cleanup of the area that leads up to the city’s iconic Ponte Vecchio. Tourists were quick to capitalise on the sight by taking ‘selfies’ with the sunken parking area in the background.

Related Content

  • VIDEO captures unloved, unowned Reynolds Bridge reduced to rubble
    May 18, 2015
    There was a big bang in a small town in the US state of Pennsylvania this month when a fragmentation explosion brought down the 100-year-old Reynolds Road Bridge. It was the end to the unloved bridge near Factoryville, population around 1,500. Factoryville is notable for a lack of factories ever since the one and only plant, a wool-into-cloth factory, closed down several years after it opened in the 1800s. Local residents were not sorry to see the felling of the 40m long, reinforced concrete arch deck
  • Atlas Copco’s new COP 4038 drill is most powerful on market
    November 29, 2013
    Atlas Copco has launched the most powerful rock drill currently on the market. The COP 4038 is a 40kW machine operating at a frequency of 140Hz compared with the 117Hz of the COP 3038. Designed for tunnelling and drifting in the hole at 43–64mm, the COP 4038 is an extremely advanced unit. High frequency technology is said by Atlas Copco to be utilised so that instead of simply striking the drill steel harder, the piston strikes at a higher frequency, resulting in faster penetration without increased stress
  • New tests for modified bitumens and mixes with RAP
    December 19, 2014
    This month we learn about a new test which is helping to predict the performance of asphalt mixtures containing recycled materials and modifiers, and we showcase some of the new testing equipment recently launched - writes Kristina Smith Researchers in the US have come up with a new test to help owners and contractors better predict the performance of their roads. “The problem is that the current tests cannot determine the performance of new materials,” said Dr Haleh Azari, manager of the AASHTO Advanced P
  • Swarco inaugurates new glass bead factory in lower Austria
    July 11, 2022
    Glass microspheres are a versatile product. They are used as reflectors to create nighttime visibility of road markings and traffic signs to improve road safety. But they also have multiple uses in non-traffic applications, whether as blasting media in surface treatment, as filler beads for the compaction of plastics, in additive manufacturing / 3D printing, and water filtering techniques, to name just a few.