Upper East Side Sinkhole: 20-Foot Crater Startles Neighborhood

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A sinkhole opened up in the middle of an Upper East Side street Thursday morning, prompting utility outages, emergency repairs and concerns about the state of the city's infrastructure.

The sinkhole, on East 89th Street between York and East End avenues, was first reported at 8:32 a.m. in a city alert.

The hole measures 20 feet deep and about 15 by 15 feet in diameter, a spokesperson for the city's Emergency Management department said. A 12-inch water main and a six-inch sewer pipe are being eyed as possible causes, investigators told City Councilmember Ben Kallos.

Photos and videos showed the sinkhole stretching across the middle of the road as crews from the Department of Environmental Protection jackhammered into the asphalt. The city asked neighbors to avoid the area.

A sinkhole showed up outside the apartment last night #NewYorkCity pic.twitter.com/qKrO86iQPp
— Nathan Elliot Velasquez (@IncredibleMrNat) July 15, 2021

Two buildings had their utilities shut off: an empty building under construction, as well as 504 East 89th Street, where 10 apartments were temporarily without water, Kallos said.

Con Edison workers found no impact on gas or utility lines, a company spokesman said. The city had no updates Thursday afternoon about the repairs or the investigation.

Thursday's collapse came just days after another crater opened up on the Upper West Side, nearly devouring two cars parked on Riverside Drive. Both came after days of heavy afternoon rainfall that briefly flooded some subway stations and left New Yorkers alarmed about the city's ability to withstand extreme weather, already being worsened by climate change.

Kallos called the trend troubling, though officials have not given any indication that Thursday's sinkhole was weather-related.

"Every New Yorker’s been getting nonstop alerts on their phones for flash flood warnings — we’ve seen our subways and even the FDR Drive flooding with the slightest rains," he told Patch. "I don’t want to see a Miami building collapse happen in New York City."

A DEP spokesperson, meanwhile, noted that reports of street cave-ins had dropped by nearly 18 percent citywide between 2019 and 2020.

UPDATE ON THE EAST 89TH STREET SINKHOLE:@NYCWater investigating 12" water main & 6" sewer main as causes of the sinkhole.
Water has been shutdown for 2 buildings, only one has tenants.@ConEdison monitoring high pressure gas main.
— Ben Kallos, NYC Council Member (@BenKallos) July 15, 2021

The last major street collapse on the Upper East Side happened in July 2020 on the East River Esplanade between East 74th and 76th street. That sinkhole was repaired after three months of work.

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.