Pelham Parkway Residents Get Results After Complaining About Sinkholes
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Ask and you shall receive.
Residents on Seymour Avenue in the Bronx said they had been calling 311 for months to report the block is being plagued by sinkholes.
"It's affecting the parking and it's dangerous," Joseph Ujfalvi said.
Some residents feared their houses could be affected next.
The Department of Environmental Protection had first responded by propping a wooden horse over one of the gaping holes, which is at the entrance of Rocco Salvatico's driveway.
"It makes me very mad to go to work in the morning, every time I have to get out with my car," Salvatico said.
But after 1010 WINS' John Montone visited the area Wednesday and found other holes had formed, causing parts of the sidewalk to buckle, the DEP took more action.
Resident Ray Unger said the DEP and the Department of Transportation sent a "multitude of trucks and supervisors" on Wednesday, within three hours of Montone coming to the neighborhood, to test the area and address the situation.
"They actually brought in workers throughout the day to repair all those sinkholes which have plagued the area," Unger said.
Councilman James Vacca called Unger to tell him that he had inspected the area on Wednesday and made calls to the agencies involved to get the sinkholes filled.
Unger said there is now a greater understanding that a long term solution must be addressed sooner rather than later.
"There definitely has to be major repair made to the whole block and the temporary solution that they've done will have to be redone again because that's not the permanent solution," Unger said.
Unger and neighbor Ed Desantos said the city bureaucracy has been paralyzed trying to determine whether the holes are sinkholes or potholes.
"They're sinkholes! They go down to nowhere," Unger said.
"We actually saw a car go into one of the big sinkholes down on the corner," Desantos said.
Unger said the neighborhood has been having problems with sinkholes since 2005.
"As the wood decays in the street the sinkholes become a bigger problem especially with the change in the weather conditions, from hot to cold," Unger said.
The city addressed the issue years ago after Montone reported the situation.
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