BROOKLYN HEIGHTS — A sinkhole opened up on Old Fulton Street in Brooklyn Heights on Thursday around 12:46 p.m. — trapping a gray Nissan Altima up to its right front bumper. The incident happened at the busy intersection of Old Fulton with the Hicks Street entrance to the BQE.
New York City Fire Department responders blocked the intersection while a tow truck pulled the vehicle out of the hole. Traffic was diverted until a repair crew arrived to patch the crevice Friday and Saturday.
Workers filled the gaping hole on Old Fulton Street with dirt, gravel and other materials before patching it. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle
It could have been worse, a contractor told the Brooklyn Eagle on Saturday. The hole was only 3-feet wide on the surface, but it widened underground to an area 8-feet wide and 4 1/2- feet deep, and water could be seen flowing at the bottom. Crews worked Friday and Saturday to patch the road before 25,000 runners hit the stretch during Sunday’s NYCRUNS Brooklyn Experience Half Marathon.
“I literally made that turn just hours before,” Eric Han, manager of New Xcell Auto Repair Center, told the Brooklyn Eagle. The auto repair shop at Old Fulton St. is across the street from the sinkhole.
Han said a repair crew initially covered the hole with a steel plate. “They came back Friday and started construction and cordoned off the street” for the temporary fix, he said. “Can you imagine if a runner fell in?”
Traffic was diverted around the sinkhole at the intersection of Old Fulton and Hicks streets on Saturday. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle
“To me there must be a bigger issue,” Han said. “You could see running water at the bottom — it swept away the ground. For all we know there could be sinkholes popping up everywhere.”
Han pointed out that two days before the sinkhole opened up, a manhole exploded at the same intersection. “Green and black smoke was pouring out,” he said, adding that a Con Edison worker told him a section of thick copper wiring had corroded. “Two days later a sinkhole develops. Are they related?
Ray, an employee at New Xcell who did not give his last name, said he was having lunch at his desk in front of a window that looks out over the intersection when the manhole blew. “A tourist standing there jumped three feet into the air,” he said. “All you could see was smoke.”
Construction crews patched a large sinkhole that opened on Old Fulton Street in Brooklyn Heights. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle
An FDNY spokesperson told the Eagle the manhole fire was called in at 12:46 p.m. Tuesday and closed at 1:03 p.m., and Con Edison was notified.
“This has been a very eventful week,” Han said. “A sinkhole, a manhole … What is happening?”
The Eagle has reached out to the New York City Department of Transportation for comment.
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