With blueberry pie and sweet corn on his mind, Mike Coakley had a pleasant drive along Manor Road in Concord. But things went downhill fast Thursday when a hole opened up underneath the front left wheel of his Honda CR-V.
“Boom! I just dropped,” said Coakley, who had been on his way to Apple Hill Farm about noon. “It startled the heck out of me, let me tell you.”
After pulling over, he was able to direct other cars around the danger until authorities shut down the 100 block of Manor Road, between Sewalls Falls Road and Jonathan Drive. Aside from an obvious flat tire, Coakley said eh wasn’t sure what damage his car may have suffered.
City engineer Greg Meagher, who was right down the road at a construction site, came by to check it out.
“After all that rain we had last night, it could be anything,” he said. “It’s a lot of soil to just disappear.”
Later in the day, Chip Chesley, director of general services for Concord, said the heavy rain Wednesday had filled a drain pipe under the road to the point that water leaked out of at least one joint between sections of pipe, washing away some of the dirt that held up the road until the pavement broke under Coakley’s vehicle.
The 24-inch pipe is made of vitrified clay, a process of heating clay and shale that creates a hard material similar in look and feel to ceramic. The pipe was installed in 1935, he said, a time when vitrified clay was standard construction material for such piping.
The road was reopened to two-way traffic by 4 p.m. using a temporary patch. It will be limited to one lane for a time on Friday while the section of road is repaved.
Inspection of the drainpipe by a camera showed that it was not damaged by the leak and does not need to be replaced, Chesley said.
(Elizabeth Frantz can be reached at efrantz@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @lizfrantz. David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek.)
