Security cameras caught the entire sequence: two vehicles roll to a stop at a red light, and seven seconds later the pavement beneath them is simply gone.
What the Footage Actually Shows
The collapse happened around 3:30 p.m. at the intersection of 67th Street and Pacific Street in Omaha, Nebraska, where a maroon sinkhole opened beneath a Jeep SUV and a Dodge Ram pickup stopped at a red light. University of Nebraska-Omaha Public Safety cameras captured both vehicles dropping into the crater within seconds, while other nearby motorists narrowly avoided the same fate by only a few feet, backing away as the asphalt continued to crumble.
A Close Call With a Clean Outcome
Both drivers climbed out of their vehicles on their own before emergency responders arrived, and authorities confirmed neither was injured. Police and fire crews moved quickly to secure the intersection, blocking traffic and assessing whether the sinkhole might continue to widen before crews could stabilize it.
What Actually Caused the Ground to Give Way
According to Omaha city officials, an underground pressurized water leak is the likely culprit. City engineers determined the leak eroded the soil supporting the roadway over time, and once that underlying material washed away, the asphalt above no longer had the structural base needed to hold the weight of vehicles stopped at the light — a slow-building failure that gave no visible warning until the moment it gave out entirely.
Getting the Vehicles Out and the Road Back
Tow trucks pulled both the Jeep and the Dodge Ram from the sinkhole around 6 p.m., and crews worked for hours at the site, temporarily shutting off water service to nearby homes while repairs got underway. The intersection stayed closed as public works teams examined the underlying infrastructure and began restoring stable support beneath the roadway.
Why This Could Have Been Much Worse
Given the volume of traffic that typically moves through that intersection, the outcome here was about as good as this kind of failure can go — two vehicles lost, zero injuries, and no additional vehicles caught in the collapse. It’s a stark reminder that infrastructure failures like this can escalate from nothing to catastrophic in the time it takes a traffic light to cycle.