Ashley Marisch likely wouldn’t be alive if a stranger hadn’t told her to get out of her car just before what police would describe as a “massive” sinkhole consumed her Toyota Rav4.
“I still can’t believe that this happened,” Marisch said. “ … looking down into that hole, it was pretty scary to see my car get sucked in like that.”
Marisch said she thought she hit a pothole on West Oxford Avenue near Santa Fe Drive Tuesday afternoon. But, a man realized what actually happened ... and told she needed to get out immediately. Marisch said she grabbed her phone and got out.
"Right after it happened, I looked down in the hole and the air bags were deployed and I think that would've really messed up my chances of getting out," she said.
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Sgt. Greg Miller with the Sheridan Police Department said if Marisch hadn’t been able to escape her vehicle before it fell into the surging water beneath the busy road, it’s unlikely she would have survived.
Miller would know. During the early morning hours of June 5, 2015, a sinkhole in roughly the same area swallowed his patrol car.
“Water’s rushing around the car, and I see this big drainage in front of me,” Miller said. “So I look up and I crawl through the window, get on top of the SUV and reach up on top of the pavement to pull myself out.”
Marisch’s car remained in the sinkhole for hours, but was finally extracted on Wednesday morning.
The vehicle was covered with mud and smashed by the impact of the fall.
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Miller said inspectors spent Wednesday afternoon assessing the pipe under the road all the way to the Platte River.
The city of Englewood owns the pipe that caused the water main break. In a statement to the media, the city called Tuesday evening’s storm a “100-year event.”
“During the storm, an estimated 2.5 inches of rain fell in 30 minutes, which caused the pipe to pressurize at over 25 psi,” the statement reads. “The pipe was not designed for this pressure.”
Members of the 9NEWS weather team are verifying the claim about the severity of the storm.
A spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Transportation could not say what would cause two sinkholes in roughly the same area in a three-year time period.
In a Facebook post, Marisch thanked her “angel” for saving her life ... and she wants to meet him. She said he had curly hair and a ponytail.
“It’s not everyday you think that something like that’s going to happen,” she said. “And I just really did think it was a giant pothole that I managed to not see.”
