Toronto police are asking motorists to avoid a section of roadway in the west end due to a large sinkhole.
In a message posted to Twitter Tuesday morning, police said the sinkhole had opened up at Richardson Avenue, on Eglinton Avenue east of Keele Street
The hole, which was large enough to swallow a car, measured approximately six metres wide and 1.5 metres deep.
"My first words were, 'Unbelievable,'" a resident in the area told CTV Toronto after seeing the gaping sinkhole.
"It is scary," said another.
A representative of the City of Toronto told CTV News that the water pressure started to dwindle in the area at approximately 9 p.m. on Monday. A 15 centimetre cast iron pipe, installed by the old city of York in 1916, cracked overnight, wearing away the soil and causing the pavement above to collapse.
Police asked drivers to use alternate routes until the hole is repaired. One eastbound and one westbound lane are closed to traffic.
The water has also been shut off in a number of nearby homes and businesses, as crews work to replace the corroded pipe and fill in the sinkhole.
According to the city, the pipe was already on a list of water mains that needed to be replaced.
"This has been a bad year for us this past winter," said Joe Cirillo, a manager at Toronto Water. "We've had over 1,200 breaks already."
City crews on Tuesday also discovered a damaged sewer pipe in the area, meaning the roadway will likely be torn up until Thursday.
Earlier this year, crews working on an underground tunnel discovered a similar situation in the same stretch of Eglinton. A worker noticed water and soil leaking into the tunnel being built for the new crosstown light rail transit system. The leak was contained and soil tests were conducted before the roadway was repaired.
With a report from CTV Toronto's Natalie Johnson
