© AJ Reynolds/OnlineAthens.com & Athens Banner-HeraldSinkhole
Lynn Taylor, who lives on Collins Avenue immediately behind the Baxter Street Car Wash, said she began hearing noises shortly after midnight Tuesday, and continued to hear the noises intermittently throughout the early morning hours before discovering that the sinkhole had opened up next door.
"It sounded like somebody was ruffling my doors," Taylor said. She called Athens-Clarke County police, but did not know Tuesday afternoon what police did in response to her call.
"What if somebody had been buying some ice?" Taylor wondered Tuesday as she surveyed the sinkhole.
By Tuesday afternoon, the owner of the car wash had a crane contractor on the scene working to determine what might be done to stabilize the structure.
In addition to swallowing the ice machine, the sinkhole swallowed one wall at the end of the car wash. That end of the building was being held up Monday by only a small column of bricks.
Toby Hines, owner of the crane company contacted by the car wash's owner, said Tuesday afternoon that there were two possibilities for stabilizing the structure. One option, Hines said, was to build columns on "good dirt" away from the sinkhole and run a steel beam between them to support the roof. The other option, according to Hines, was to demolish the end stall of the car wash, leaving an undamaged wall to support that end of the structure.
Whatever is done with the structure, Hines's question Tuesday was where the dirt washed away as the ground sank had gone.
"You don't wave a magic wand and have dirt just disappear," he said.
Hines said Tuesday he was waiting to hear from an insurance adjuster before proceeding with any repairs to the structure.
As Hines waited for word on how to proceed Tuesday, an Athens-Clarke County utilities crew was using a camera to investigate the storm sewer infrastructure in and near the car wash. As of midafternoon, the crew was looking into the question Hines had pondered with regard to where the dirt had gone.
Initial indications form the camera survey, said county engineering administrator Jerry Oberholtzer, were that none of the dirt had gotten into the storm sewerage infrastructure in the immediate area.
As to the larger question of whether the county's storm sewers might have contributed to the sinkhole, Oberholtzer said the camera surveys done as of Tuesday afternoon hadn't revealed any collapses of storm sewerage in the area.
The county crew was somewhat hampered, Oberholtzer indicated, by the fact that there were no engineering drawings available detailing the storm sewerage infrastructure along the affected section of Baxter Street.
"It's a very old system," Oberholtzer said.
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