Toledo Sinkhole Swallows Car With Passenger Inside, Heavy Rains In Ohio Suspected To Have Caused Sinkhole

An Ohio woman inside a car was swallowed by a sinkhole at a busy intersection in Toledo on Wednesday, but she scrambled to safety when rescue officials provided her with a ladder, reports said.

The woman, Pamela Knox, 60, is the principal at Glendale-Feilbach Elementary School, and she was traveling on North Detroit Avenue, near West Bancroft Street, when the road caved in. Although she saw the car in front of her starting to slip into the hole, it managed to drive through. But Knox was not as lucky.

“I was calling on the name of Jesus and all I could do was say, ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,’ and I kept saying it over and over and over again,” Knox told the Toledo Blade. “I know that’s what kept me safe, was just calling on the power of the Lord.”

Authorities believe the 10-foot-deep sinkhole, was formed due to a break in a water line beneath the road, and as soon as the car fell into the hole, water from a burst pipe began to fill its back seat.

“I didn’t know what was going to happen. I thought I was going to die,” Knox told the Toledo Blade. “It was very scary. I didn’t want to keep looking at it [the water] because it made it worse. I stayed face-forward, but it was filling up that back seat.”

Knox was helped out of the sinkhole by a firefighter and rushed to a Toledo hospital where she was examined and is reported to be in good health.

Repair work on the road is expected to take at least five days, Mayor Mike Bell told the Toledo Blade, adding that the incident occurred before the holiday traffic began. According to Bell, heavy rains in Toledo since the beginning of last month, might be an additional factor that made the road to give way.

“Northwest Ohio paced well-ahead of its average rainfall during the last month,” Weather.com meteorologist, Nick Wiltgen, said. "Toledo has had 6.46 inches of rain since June 1. The average is 3.78 inches for that period.”