This is one of the busiest commercial strips in our city, with buses and pedestrians here almost around the clock.  So a hole this big is frightening but shocking, too, that no one got hurt.

Within minutes of this giant sinkhole opening up on Rideau Street, dozens of first responders were on the scene, not knowing what they might find.

“The hole, the street just collapsed,” says a construction worker, as he passes under the yellow police tape to escape the scene.

Dramatic video taken by one of our viewers shows water gushing into the hole just above the tunnel for the LRT.



Construction worker Pierre Godbout was just coming out when the collapse happened.

"There's never a warning for that,” says Godbout, “when the tunnel went down, that was our warning. There were guys close but everybody seemed okay. But we don't know for sure.”

Everybody seemed okay but not everything.  A van on the edge of the hole appeared to teeter for a few minutes, then plummet into the crevice as the hole expanded.  Fortunately, the driver was not in the van at the time.

As the soil collapsed, it took the road with it snapping a gas line as well. 

“We walked outside and we could smell immediately the gas,” says construction worker Stefano Landry, “then we saw the big sinkhole and we knew something happened.”

That gas leak dramatically increased the level of threat. Rideau Centre was evacuated, along with the Shaw Centre and the Westin, along with dozens of businesses and coffee shops along Rideau.

“It's massive,” says construction worker Joshua Lefebvre of the sinkhole, “and it makes me think I'm on War of the Worlds or something,” he laughs.

But it wasn't a laughing matter for the dozens of retail shops losing business or the onlookers terrified of the sites and smell.

“I got scared,” says an hysterical Courtney Atkins, as firefighters evacuated her and other from a nearby coffee shop, “It's the first time I saw this happen.  They need more support underneath the ground.”

What happened underneath the ground is still up in the air. At a hastily called news conference, the mayor said tunneling for light rail transit was a possibility.

“Construction of the tunnel is happening around the vicinity,” Mayor Jim Watson said, “We can't confirm if the tunnel had any impact on the sink hole, or if it's just a water main break or whether it was a leak of some type that destabilized the soil.”

Destabilized, indeed.  The hole that spanned just half of Rideau at first soon covered the entire width of the street. 

So the question is, will it stop there or is more of the road at risk and are the adjacent buildings

at risk?  Those are questions that city engineers are scrambling to answer.