Heavy rainfall and the resulting erosion caused a sinkhole to form earlier this week in Ladysmith, forcing the partial closure of a road just down from the Festival of Lights building.
The depression, which was several feet wide, happened Wednesday, Nov. 15 around 3 a.m. where the 4th Avenue crosses Rocky Creek.
Water levels were high due to rain that pounded much of Vancouver Island a day earlier and impacted a culvert that runs beneath the roadway.
“We think that there is some debris that just got across the front of the culvert and that diminishes the capacity of the culvert and the water rises up forces its way onto the road and chews away at the ground,” said the town’s director of infrastructure Geoff Goodall, who was on scene observing the road repair.