The road outside the University of Nebraska-Omaha apparently had enough on Tuesday afternoon and decided to make its feelings known in the most dramatic way possible. And it took two cars with it.
Security cameras captured the jaw-dropping moment when a stretch of pavement near 67th and Pacific streets gave way around 3:30 p.m., swallowing two cars whole and dropping them several feet into the earth. The footage shows the two vehicles sitting innocently at an intersection when a pickup truck pulls up behind them — and then, as if on cue, the ground simply… nope’d out.
To be fair to the pickup truck driver, we’ve all felt like we were about to cause a catastrophe in traffic. This one just happened to be literal.
The mysterious sinkhole and its aftermath
Emergency crews rushed to the scene, though by the time they arrived, both drivers had already climbed out of the hole on their own; which honestly deserves its own round of applause. Nothing in the driver’s ed manual prepares you for that exit strategy.
“This caught everybody by surprise,” University of Nebraska-Omaha Public Safety Lt. Dan Martin told local outlet WOWT, which may be the understatement of the year. Dust billowed up from the pavement as the vehicles dropped, giving the whole scene an almost cinematic quality — the kind of thing you’d assume was CGI if you didn’t know better.
Adding insult to injury, a water main broke during the collapse, because apparently the earth felt the situation wasn’t complicated enough already. No injuries were reported, which is genuinely remarkable given how fast and without warning the whole thing went down.
A heavy-duty tow truck — equipped with a crane, because regular tow trucks clearly weren’t dramatic enough for this occasion — arrived hours later to fish the cars out of what was now essentially a concrete crater. Crews simultaneously worked to clear the debris, a process that looked about as fun as it sounds.
As for why the road collapsed? Officials haven’t said. The area around aging urban infrastructure is no stranger to sinkholes, but the exact cause here remains under investigation. Lt. Martin also cautioned that the sinkhole had the potential to grow larger, which is the kind of news that makes you reconsider your commute route entirely.
The street is expected to stay closed for several days while repairs are made, so drivers in the area are strongly encouraged to find an alternate route — preferably one where the ground has given some indication it plans to stay put.
The silver lining? Both drivers walked away unharmed, the cars were recovered, and the whole thing was caught on camera so we can watch this wild phenomenon to feel better about our own Tuesday.