Chicago downpour rips open sinkhole, swallows 3 cars

CHICAGO A rainstorm pummeling the Chicago area has ripped open a sinkhole large enough to swallow three cars, injuring one driver bad enough that he had to be hospitalized.

Chicago Police Department spokesman Mike Sullivan says the gaping hole opened up in a street on the city's South Side, near Lake Michigan.

He says the injured man was driving when the road buckled and caved in. He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital with non-life threatening injuries. The other two cars were parked.

Flooding has also forced authorities to close sections of several major expressways around Chicago. Schools have been canceled, and several hundred flights were scrapped at O'Hare International Airport, where Thursday's storm has dumped more than 5 inches of rain.

CBS Chicago reports in Lombard, a suburb of Chicago, the mayor declared a state of emergency because most of the village's streets are flooded. Elmhurst, Schiller Park and River Grove also are under state of emergency or have issued disaster declarations.

"The only way to get around is by kayak or canoe," one Lombard resident told CBS Chicago's Susanna Song.

Two more inches was expected throughout the day.