Bob Wood, 75, was asleep when his boat started tipping into the hole. “All I could hear was rushing water,” he said, after jumping to the towpath seconds before his home was dragged down.
Emergency crews declared a major incident as “large volumes of water” escaped into surrounding fields. Images from the scene show three stranded boats.
The fire service initially said the incident had been caused by a “developing sinkhole”. However, the Canal and River Trust, which oversees the maintenance of the UK’s 3218km network of waterways, later said it was caused by the canal wall giving way.
Wood, who has been living on the boat for eight years, had only moored up at the site on Sunday night.
He told how he woke and had to flee the boat as it descended into the giant hole.
“I was in the boat asleep and I thought I needed to go to the toilet, so I got up and thought ‘we are leaning a bit’,” he said. “I thought I was in the middle of a big storm, there was the sound of a lot of water.
“I opened the back door to see why we were tilting and realised it was not raining at all – it was the water running away under the boat. I jumped on the back and stepped off and that bit was going down at that second. The back went 8ft in the air, and I landed on my front.”
Wood went to the boat next to him in the darkness to alert its occupants, hammering on the sides to wake them up.
He added: “He got out really quickly, and his boat went down as well. My boat went nose down and his went stern first.”
Two of the vessels plunged into the sinkhole, while another was left balanced on the edge.
Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service confirmed that nobody had been injured.
Describing the scene, Councillor Sho Abdul said: “It was like an explosive had gone off. It’s an absolute crater, it’s devastating, especially for the people who use this area often. The lack of casualties is an absolute miracle.”
Some boat owners had to be pulled from their vessels by firefighters after the canal emptied. They have since been moved to a welfare centre at the old Whitchurch police station.
Andy Hall, a local councillor, said: “It was terrible for the people in their canal boats at that time in the morning. They described it as feeling like an earthquake. It was very scary for them – that is their home and where they live.
“We’ve lost a couple of boats – one is sitting at the bottom of the sinkhole at the moment. There’s one teetering on the edge and could slide down at any time. More has fallen away since we’ve been here this morning.
“The fire and rescue teams have been all over it. Their biggest worry this morning was making sure everyone was safe and off their boats.”
Hall added that the situation “could have been a lot worse”.
Mark Durham, the Canal and River Trust’s principal engineer, said the most accurate term to describe what had happened was “embankment failure”.
Speaking on Monday, he said the wall in question was man-made and designed to “hold the canal up, which it’s done for over 200 years”.
The charity, founded in 2012, has launched an investigation into the collapse. A spokesman said: “Our teams are on site and have dammed off the affected section of canal. The priority is the safety of boaters and those in the immediate area. The towpath and canal at this point are now closed to public access.
“We are carrying out initial investigations into the possible cause of the breach and will provide more details in due course.
“We will also seek to return water levels either side of the breach as soon as possible and are providing support to the boaters affected and those in the immediate area either side of the breach.”
In Swindon last February, an emergency dam had to be put in place to stop a canal emptying after a sinkhole was spotted by members of the Wilts & Berks Canal Trust on a bank by the canal.
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