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OXFORD, Miss. — The Oxford Police Department released photos on Thursday of the progress being made to fix a gigantic sinkhole in Lafayette County.
The sinkhole has been fixed. Till to fill in the massive gap. Still have a while till it’s completely opened. pic.twitter.com/NB47wRwie4
— Oxford Police Dept (@OxfordPolice) April 30, 2015
The Department continued by thanking all of the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) workers who worked around the clock to repair the road.
On Wednesday traffic was a nightmare on one of the busiest highways in Lafayette County, Mississippi.
The giant sinkhole swallowed two lanes of Highway 6 in Oxford.
A broken drain pipe below the asphalt likely caused the collapse and everyone agreed it was a miracle no vehicles plunged into the huge crater.
The sinkhole, on the East bound side of Highway 6, had drivers wondering what happened and left looking for alternate routes.
“Wow! I mean I was coming down the road and I seen that big pothole there and it just amazed me. Cause I come up and down that road all the time. I used to stay here in Oxford,” said Ralph Pollard.
Pollard was right.
It was an amazing sight and a miracle no one was hurt.
But what stopped traffic on Highway 6, near the Ole Miss campus Wednesday morning, was not just your garden variety “pothole.”
“It just scared me a little bit,” Ralph Pollard told WREG.
Just after 8 am the earth gave way and caused the giant sinkhole that devoured a portion of two east bound lanes between Jackson Avenue and Chucky Mullins Drive.
“We started getting some reports this morning about a little “sag” in the roadway, a little settle in the roadway. And then we got a call from the Oxford City Police saying that the road had fell in,” said Brian Childs, MDOT District 2.
Katelyn Davis lived in Oxford and said word of the sinkhole spread fast.
“My dad even heard about it. He lives in Senatobia. So, that’s a pretty good distance,” said Davis.
An army of MDOT workers believed they found the cause for the sinkhole: a 24 inch drain pipe about thirty feet below the asphalt.
“We have one section that looks like it has separated just a little bit. That’s what we feel like is the problem right now. We’re going to dig down to that and try to repair that by pouring a concrete collar around it,” said Childs.
He said crews would work until the problem was fixed.
Drivers headed East on Highway 6 should expect major delays.
MDOT added a layer of gravel to the shoulder of the highway to allow traffic to move safely around workers.
John Landers said he was caught in the traffic mess Wednesday morning trying to get out of town.
“I was really scared that I was going to be hours late because of that whole ordeal. But luckily I wasn’t,” he said.
No one with MDOT was able to tell us how old the drain pipe was that crews were working on.
