Residents express shock as sinkhole in English village grows

The Star

A large sinkhole has appeared in the southern English village of Godstone, which took many residents by surprise and forced authorities to evacuate residents from around 30 homes.  WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

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00:00Residents living in Godstone Village were in shock after a large sinkhole appeared on

00:07High Street and began to expand further, forcing the evacuation of about 30 households.

00:14The sinkhole, which first appeared on Monday, grew to at least 20 meters by Tuesday, raising

00:19safety concerns in the area.

00:21The situation escalated on Wednesday when a second sinkhole emerged, prompting the Surrey

00:27County Council to declare it a major incident.

00:30The sinkhole's sort of taken us all by shock, I think.

00:33It's obviously stopped everything.

00:35It's very quiet for the first time in a very long time.

00:37We've lived here about six and a half years.

00:40Usually we've got trucks roaring past.

00:43It's always a busy street.

00:44In fact, the night of the sinkhole, from about 5.30ish, this whole road was packed with cars

00:50lining up to go into the M25 because of all the accidents and things there.

00:55So it's just lucky it didn't happen while all those cars were there, otherwise we'd

00:58have had something go through.

00:59The affected properties were built roughly three years ago on the site of a former sand

01:03quarry.

01:05Some residents believe that there are underground caves in the area, possibly contributing to

01:09the incident.

01:10We were just told to keep looking on social media for updates as to when we could return,

01:14but we haven't actually heard anything concrete from anybody that we're stable.

01:19I think a news outlet said yesterday that we've got underpinning on our property because

01:23it's new, so maybe more stable, but then an SES guy just told me that there's caves

01:27underneath here, so I actually don't know how stable it is.

01:31The Surrey County Council said investigations are ongoing and the site is being assessed

01:36by structural experts so that they can manage the risks and repair work better.

01:41They said water and electricity supply had been restored and more permanent repair work

01:46will be carried out once the site is deemed safe for workers.

01:53For more UN videos visit www.un.org

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