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

  • Machine control technology round table discussion with Leica Geosystems, Topcon and Trimble
    January 4, 2022
    In this, the first in a series of top-level roundtable discussions led by World Highways, editor Mike Woof and editorial director Geoff Hadwick talk machine control technology with three world-class experts from Leica Geosystems, part of Hexagon, Topcon and Trimble. Find out what these key opinion leaders are thinking on six vitally important topics. Let them help you stay ahead of the game.
  • Well-educated personnel are the best investment for the future says the Ammann international training centre
    May 20, 2014
    Far too often, managers will view training as a luxury and not as a competitive and strategic necessity. Lazy team leaders regularly argue that it is a waste of time and money training their people, not least because these same trainees might subsequently leave the organisation. Courses are seen as an interruption, and a good way to delay things. There is always something much more pressing and important on the to-do list and staff can end up feeling forced into the training department. But these are weak a
  • PARKING ERROR
    March 1, 2012
    An Australian woman had a lucky escape when a parking error came close to killing her. The woman was manoeuvring her car into a tight space on a multi-storey car park in Melbourne when the vehicle broke through a barrier and fell nearly 20m to the ground. Witnesses described seeing the car bounce off a building to the rear and then bounce off the car park during its descent. The impacts appear to have slowed the vehicle's fall sufficiently for the woman to survive the incident. She was taken to hospital aft
  • Shell’s John Read explains “adaptable bitumen” developments
    December 15, 2016
    Shell’s highly innovative bitumen and asphalt solutions are helping create future-ready urban road networks around the world to meet the needs of today and tomorrow. Shell’s general manager of bitumen technology, Professor John Read, takes a look at some of the company’s game-changing ideas. The next 30 or so years will see a significant transformation in the way we live. Whereas almost 75% of the world’s population lived in rural locations in 1950, around 75% will live in cities by 2050. The global popu