A large sinkhole caused a small section of a major highway to be reduced to one lane for northbound traffic over the past week.
Wednesday afternoon, the stretch of road located at approximately 195 Veterans Memorial Drive caved in, creating a sinkhole about 15 feet long and five feet wide. The cause of the sinkhole was a large leak in 15-inch sewer line beneath the road.
“We noticed that there was a dip in the road that had gotten worse Wednesday morning, to which we had crews from the Mississippi Department of Transportation fill it in with patching material,” Kosciusko mayor Jimmy Cockroft said. “We had arranged for a company to come out and put cameras in line to see exactly what the problem was and had contacted our city engineer to begin to seek a contractor to make the needed repairs. However, once the road caved all the way, we had to go straight to the contractor.”
The road was repaired by Thursday and was left to set up until Monday. However, after more testing, the patch continued to have soft spots. Therefore, the hole was dug back out Monday morning.
“The best I can tell is that we have dug out the bad dirt and soft spots and gone back with a flowable fill to make sure the repair holds up,” Cockroft added Monday night. “We will put some limestone over that until the weather allows us to patch it with asphalt. Weather permitting, we are hopeful to get asphalt no later than Wednesday.”
The road is expected to be open by the end of the week or early next week.
