TOKYO (AP) — The physique of a truck driver was recovered Friday three months after his car fell into a sinkhole that all of a sudden appeared whereas he was driving on a street close to Tokyo.
The three-ton truck fell into the opening in Yashio Metropolis, simply northeast of the Japanese capital, in January. Throughout an earlier search and rescue operation, employees tried to carry the truck however solely its flat-bed got here out. The 74-year-old driver, trapped within the cabin of the truck, was believed to have been swept to a location about 30 meters (yards) downstream.
On Friday, after three months of preparation to construct a protected underground pathway for employees to succeed in the focused space, rescuers sporting helmets and hazmat fits went within it and recovered the physique, officers stated.
Specialists say the Yashio sinkhole was brought on by corrosion in sewer pipes. The unsteady floor and a hole house under it had hampered the rescue, whereas residents had been requested to chop again on water use to reduce sewage water going by means of the world.
The case was a wakeup name concerning the getting older infrastructure in Japan, the place most of its foremost public infrastructure was constructed through the speedy financial progress of the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies.
In response to the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry, greater than 10,500 sinkholes had been discovered throughout Japan, a lot of them associated to sewage amenities in city areas.
Yashio Mayor Shinobu Oyama, in a press release, provided his prayer for the motive force and condolences to his household. He pledged to do his utmost for the speedy reconstruction of the broken street.
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