Holey Car-eater
It is really, really raining in California. The Pacific Ocean has set up an “atmospheric river “— a long plume of moisture stretching out into the Pacific that is dropping staggering amounts of rain and snow. We all can relate to heavy, persistent rain and lots of snow, just remember Buffalo a couple of weeks ago. There are a couple of complications though with California. First off, most of the state is a natural desert so there is not a lot water table to keep the earth stable and much of the state is built around mountains. The combination, when flooded, means the dirt literally “liquefies” and begins to flow downhill like the water coursing above it.
That is how we get to this exciting adventure of falling into a massive sinkhole while driving down a country road. A woman and her daughter were driving down the country road in the dark and rain and drove over the edge of this massive washout into a 12 foot hole at the time. Within a few minutes a pickup truck coming down the did the same thing landing right on top of the women’s sedan. The people in the pickup truck were able to get out of their vehicle and climb to the side of the hole eventually getting to the road surface that was still intact. As they watched the earth in the hole was being washed away and the hole was now 15 feet deep. County fire tried to climb into the hole and free the women, but the ground was too unstable. The car, the truck and the firemen were slowly being washed away.
As you will see in the video below: While the two occupants of the truck were able to escape on their own, extricating the teenage girl and adult woman in the bottom vehicle “involved bringing ground ladders and laying them down to span the hole so crews could try to reach the victims.” The two women were lifted by using the crane operation of the fire truck lowering a fireman into the hole and suspending him outside the car to pull the door open and then lifting both the rescuer and one woman at a time held in the arms of a firefighter. Grainy footage of the incident shows one of the victims clinging to the firefighter as they are lifted to safety. The LAFD confirmed that both the woman and the teen sustained minor injuries and were evaluated at a local hospital. Both vehicles remain in the hole at least until the rain stops.
Holey Humor
What do you call a bakery that only sells bagels and donuts?
Hole foods.
My sister in California said she felt two earthquakes just in the last week.
I told her it was her fault.
It’s getting real bad here in California. I just got robbed at the gas station. I called the cops and they asked if I knew who did it.
“It was pump #5,” I replied.
I was driving my father and my grandfather got a rough country road. My lack of experience in handling grandpa’s four-wheel-drive vertical made for a particularly bouncy ride. Embarrassed, I offered a lame excuse. “The sun shadows through the trees make it hard for me to see all the potholes.”
“Don’t worry, Matt”, grandpa said. “Your getting’ most of them.”
January 13th Birthdays
1995 – Natalia Dyer, 1979 – Jill Wagner, 1951 – Julia Louis-Dreyfus, 1970 – Shonda Rimes
1990 – Liam Hemsworth, 1966 – Patrick Dempsey, 1977 – Orlando Bloom, 1962 – Trace Adkins