A family's home was ruined when a sinkhole opened up and created a huge hole in the floor.
The hole opened up in the home of the Varela family in Ecuador, located in Solanda, south of Quito
House owner Carlos Varela said a leak started in June of this year and slowly got worse, leading to the catastrophic problem in his house.
He called the Quito Potable Water Company to fix a leak in the room used as storage and it was initially fixed, but the problems unfortunately continued.
As the hole continued to grow Carlos and his wife were forced to draw water from buckets
With the problem getting worse, Carlos had to make adjustments to the house that included breaking the wall of the house facing the street in order for him to be able to discharge the water out of the house.
"We have stopped attending the meetings held by the municipality because now it is our priority to remove the water if we do not do so, a fetid odour emanates from the hole," he said to El Comercio.
Local residents have also complained of house walls cracking that began with the construction of the nearby metro stations around 30 years ago.
There have been a number of sinkhole incidents in Ecuador in recent years.
In December 2021, dramatic footage showed a building collapsing in the southern Ecuadorian city of Zaruma and local residents put the blame on unregulated mining.
Gold is found in the mines surrounding the town and is such a valuable commodity that the mining goes largely unchecked despite the danger it may pose to residents and their homes.
A resident, Clara Fierro Prieto, told Amico Hoops: "I was lying on my bed, we heard about 20 explosions and people started yelling at us to get out of the houses, I couldn’t get anything out of my house and in less than a quarter of an hour my house fell.
"The saddest moment of my life was when they warned us of cracks in the foundations of our house, we could barely get out and my house fell down, and I lost everything…
An illegal miner told Bloomberg: "It won’t end. That’s the way it is."
Local media reported at the time that around 300 people had to be evacuated when the sinkhole formed quickly, shortly after residents first began noticing cracks.
Mauricio Carrion told El Comercio: "A few minutes before we heard a roar as if it were a dynamite explosion, we were immediately alerted that the two houses collapsed, my house is located about 20 meters from ground zero."
