New York man, 80, swallowed by sinkhole outside his front door

[n2doc]

An elderly man says he's lucky to be alive after he walked outside his front door to pick up the morning papers -- and immediately plunged into a sinkhole.

"Before you know it I was down in the hole," Michael Ciron, 80, told Newsday. "Everything was black .... I was under the ground."

The sinkhole was 8-feet deep and the hole itself was somewhat snug, as you can see in the image above. That turned out to be a good thing for Ciron, who kept his wits about him and began to claw some of the dirt from the top of the hole to shore up the bottom -- and hoist himself up. "I finally got my head out," he told CBS Local.com.

Once he got his head above ground, he began to holler for help.

more

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/11/80-year-old-ny-man-swallowed-up-by-sinkhole-outside-his-front-door.html

[seabeyond]

1. wow. amazing. and 80 at that. rpetty damn impressed. nt

[Liberal Veteran]

2. Oh great...now I have an Alice in Chains song stuck in my head.

Glad the guy was okay. That's gotta be scary to have the earth try to swallow you.

[dionysus]

3. ...but my wings have been sewn and iiiiiii ... iiiiiii...iiiiiiiii... iiiiiiii

[dtexdem]

4. What a holey terror!

That newspaper must have really been heavy. ;-)

[nilram]

5. Ha, and I was just quoting Lewis Carroll in another thread!

Too bad his name isn't Alice. :>

[AsahinaKimi]

6. Damn Those Sink holes...

Always lying in wait, for just the right person, to fall into its trap!!!