12 vehicles swallowed in Mississippi carpark cave-in

Twelve vehicles were swallowed when a 120m-long section of an outdoor parking lot caved in outside a Mississippi pancake house that had only been open for a few days.

The crater that opened up on Saturday night beneath the parking lot of an IHop restaurant in Meridian consumed cars, trucks, and SUVs as the surface dropped about 4.5m, according to Meridian public safety director Buck Roberts.

No one was injured in the incident, the Meridian Star newspaper stated.

Gwendolyn Fikes told the paper that a Honda Accord owned by her daughter was one of the vehicles that fell into the void.

Fikes said she and her daughter were inside the restaurant when the parking lot opened up.

“We’d been in there about three minutes,” said Fikes. “Then everything went black and we heard a boom.”

It was not clear what caused the cave-in, Roberts told the newspaper, saying engineers and contractors would be on site to investigate the incident.

The newspaper said the area that sank was near a storm drain that empties into a local creek.

A huge hole swallowed up cars in Mississippi as their owners sat in a nearby restaurant https://t.co/aUSCR8ZKPd pic.twitter.com/83AdkJCWDQ

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) November 9, 2015