A huge crater has opened up at a gated community in Houston, leading to eight houses being evacuated, according to local emergency services. The ground collapsed on Saturday morning in the plaza area between two rows of luxury townhouses at Sutherland Terrace Place, part of the Memorial Green community in west Houston's leafy suburb Memorial. The Houston Fire Department posted on X, formerly , on Saturday afternoon to say it was on the scene and posted pictures of the damage, showing bricks, concrete and earth spilling into an empty crater.
The fire department said nobody has been injured, but that eight homes were evacuated as a precaution and that building engineers were on location assessing the damage. Houston Fire Department Captain Beau Moreno told local television station 13 that an underground floodwater cistern, a type of water-storage tank, collapsed, creating the large crater. Following a huge amount of rain in the area, Moreno said it appeared the cistern suffered a catastrophic failure.
"It's not a sinkhole,' Moreno explained. 'This is definitely a man-made structure under the ground designed to hold floodwater in this area." ABC 13 also spoke to a man whose parents' house "started to shake" as the hole emerged in the plaza.
The channel also spoke to nearby resident, Rick Mckee, who said he was in shock. "That's a big hole," he said. "That's a really big hole.
" Houston Public Works told the network that the community is responsible for the repairs as the collapse.