What we have here is footage of a giant 5m (16 ft) sinkhole which opened up in the city of Trujilo in Peru and started feeding on a car that was traveling along the road.
Inside the car was a family (parents and their two-year-old daughter), who suffered only minor bruises. Witnesses managed to film as passers-by helped pull the terrified family out of the car through the front window with a makeshift rope.
The driver, identified as Edgar Orlando Bartolo Silva, told the media that he had stopped his car right before it began sinking.
“Some people helped us, but we were scared, because water began to filter into the vehicle,” explained Mr Silva. A local news agency said that the creation of the sinkhole can be explained by a burst sewer pipe as well as the heavy rain and flooding that took place during the past week within the region.
As much as we think this situation was an extremely difficult one already, for those inside the car, we don’t even want to imagine what the rescue would have looked like had the sinkhole been just a little deeper, with the water starting to flood the car before anybody could have gotten to it.
Also, the fact that people got involved with the rescue operation and didn’t wait for the police or the fire department shows a lot of solidarity.