3-foot deep sinkhole develops in Carrier Mills

CARRIER MILLS Ill. (KBSI) – Carrier Mills Police were called out on scene of W. Russell Street around 9:16 a.m. on August 3 as the spouse of a city worker noticed the road had started to buckle.

Officer Brian Burton with Carrier Mills Police says the Fire Department were the first on the scene and got everyone out of the apartment building safely and moved to a different location.

“Fire department responded. They got here to secure the scene to make sure everybody was safe. Make sure everybody was out of the residence then they also helped with the residence, moving all their stuff out of the house and securing it at a different location where it’s safe.”

Officer Burton says that the residents living in this apartment building will have to be relocated for the longer term as they will have to tear down and rebuild the building to fix all the damage that’s been done.

Diefenbach Rentals own the damaged apartment complex and are setting up the residents in other locations and will be in charge of the reimbursements.

“This really is an unknown amount of time that is going to take to clean this up and probably the way that apartment looks. It’s probably going to be like demolish and then rebuild from this point.”

Scott Isaacs, Chief of Police for the Carrier Mills, explains what the road looks like and where they go from here with the damages.

“First of all, we’ve determined our rough dimensions is that the road is on approximately 3 feet already so we’re monitoring that situation we’re still making measurements to see if it’s continuing to sync. That particular piece of ground has been undermined to the best of my knowledge, so we’ve reached out to the department of natural resources and mines and minerals were looking for guidance from them as far as damages. Obviously, we’re going to have to repair the street once we figure out the issue. We’ve had to cut public utilities from the apartment complex in question Which has been a pretty large fee at this point we’re talking about gas services, electrical services, etc.”

Chief Isaacs encourages the city to stay away from the area and be patient as they predict this is going to be a process.

They want to make sure everyone is staying safe during the reconstruction.

“The mayor and all the city employees are fully engaged in this. I would ask the citizens of Carrie Mills to stay away from the area. We’ve got a lot of work going on in that area. It’s not really a sightseeing thing and it’s also been cordoned. It’s dangerous that the buildings in the land shift at any time so it’s really not an area that we are asking people to go down or to stay away from that area until we can assess the situation a little bit better.”

Monday morning the Department of Natural Resources and Mines and Minerals are meeting at W Russell Street with the mayor to discuss where they go from here.