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Somerville officials try to get the hole story

Sinkhole in Somerville

R.S.Y. Buchanan peers at Somerville officials peering down a new sinkhole on Park Street, near the commuter rail tracks, today.

Yesterday, Luke Maher took a gander at Somerville's newest fountain, shooting water up on Avon Street after a Fed Ex driver managed to knock a knob off a temporary water hose:

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Comments

Once they decided we weren't all going to die right away, and nobody could smell sulfur or hear Charlie Daniels playing fiddle, I got a slightly closer look. The aperture is about 1m*2m across, and the hole appears to be a little over a meter deep and maybe 3m across at its widest point (but it's hard to be sure without climbing in, and I wasn't that committed to community journalism).

There used to be some sort of valve or meter in the road right about there, and you can just see some sort of pipe and some standing water in the cavity, so my guess is this has been eroding steadily for a while now.

We have trench plates in the road as of a few minutes ago, and Park St. had reopened. But I expect fixing this to screw up at least a couple of rush hours at some point soon.

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Doesn't look safe to stand next to but then again I'm no pavement/road inspector.

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The guy with the badge is qualified and will receive overtime. The other four are not.

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