11-05-2025
Enormous sinkhole in Dunkirk is repaired
DUNKIRK, N.Y. (WIVB) — The unexpected happened in Dunkirk on Monday.
Around noon, police received a call describing a scene where a cement truck almost fell through the road at the intersection of Central Avenue and Second Street due to a massive sinkhole.
'Any public works director across the country will say what you have to do is expect the unexpected,' said Randy Woodbury, Dunkirk department of public works chief.
The city quickly went to work — before it ran into its first problem.
'We dug down and we found out that it was deeper than our equipment could go,' Woodbury said. 'We can only go about seven feet. Most of our waterlines are about 4 1/2 feet deep, so we have equipment that does that just fine.'
The city then brought in a local contractor that had the equipment to get to the root of the issue.
'There was a brick, a handmade brick,' Woodbury said. 'A 140-year-old storm drain down there and it hadn't seen the light of day for 140 years. A couple of bricks fell out because one of our waterlines was leaking a little bit. The cement truck was it — that broke the storm sewer.'
Woodbury said it is unclear just how much the repairs will end up costing the city. But Dunkirk has a budget of $100,000 for water main maintenance.
'It's going to take a chunk out of that,' Woodbury said. 'We've been lucky so far. We had a really tough winter with the freezing and thawing, freezing and thawing — that's what tears up roads, tears up waterlines.'
As for preventative measures going forward, Woodbury said the city did just that a few years ago. In 2021, the city had a waterline break that caused a bit of commotion. After that, they put new valves on all of the waterlines.
'If we wouldn't have had those on Monday, it would have taken us longer to fix this pipe,' Woodbury said.
Woodbury thanked his team and all of the first responders who assisted, saying that they are the reason that the road was only closed for two days and that things were able to get back to normal so quickly.
Trina Catterson joined the News 4 team in 2024. She previously worked at WETM-TV in Elmira, a sister station of WIVB. See more of her work here.
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