A car was swallowed after a portion of road collapsed on Monday morning in Beijing’s Fengtai District.
The accident occurred when Chen, the owner of the Toyota Corolla parked his car along the road before heading into work.
Shortly after reaching his office, he was told that his car had fallen into a hole in the road.
When Chen came to inspect his car, he saw that the front portion of his car was submerged in the gaping hole in the road.
"People outside said: 'Your car fell down'. I then came out and saw my car was trapped like that," said Chen.
Firefighters from a nearby fire station arrived within three minutes and immediately cordoned off the area.
Staff from the municipal administration in Fengtai District as well as the highway and road maintenance departments arrived soon afterward and discussed solutions to pull the car out without damaging the underground wires.
"We have to take the car out and check whether there are any damaged wires. If the damaged wires don't affect the road maintenance, we will backfill the road.
"If it involves wires, we will contact the related department to repair the damage," said Yang Shuo, a project manager with the Beijing City Road Maintenance Group.
The car was pulled out from the hole ten minutes later. There was only some minor scratches on the car from the incident.
The road maintenance department has been found liable for any damage done to the car, and the backfill work is underway after a preliminary investigation of the underground wires.
This article originally appeared on The Star Online.
