Utility crew was digging in front of SC woman’s house. A sinkhole opened near her driveway
Annette Briggs was concerned about the road work being done near her Irmo home. A crew was laying a new fiber optic cable through her neighborhood, and she had to leave for work soon.
Then she saw something. The crew had struck a water line under the street in front of her home, and water came violently erupting out of the ground.
“I’d never seen a road swell up like that before,” Briggs said. “It rose up at least a foot, and on the sides it formed like a mound, like a mountain was forming.”
Despite the chaos outside on Willow Bend Court, Briggs still left for work last Wednesday. Then she got a call from a concerned neighbor updating the situation.
“He said you’re not parking in your driveway tonight,” she remembers. “And I said, ‘I figured.’”
The break caused several homes in the Murraywood neighborhood to lose water for several hours, and caused an untold amount of damage that made the street impassable. The water opened up a sinkhole underneath the street, and Briggs said several holes were visible along the roadway afterwards.
The incident caused Lexington County to order a stop to work by Lumos Fiber in the area while the damage was assessed and repaired. A letter from the county Public Works Department said it was in “the best interest to cease work immediately in Lexington County” and submitted a corrective action plan to the department before work could resume.
It was the latest in a series of missteps by the North Carolina-based fiber optic company looking to expand into the Midlands. In Columbia, the company was halted from digging last year after its crews caused half a dozen gas leaks, including one that required several residents of the Elmwood Park neighborhood to be temporarily evacuated from their homes and the closure of busy Elmwood Avenue.
Lumos later was permitted to resume work laying fiber optics, which are key to carrying high-speed internet signals long distance, even as more problems emerged over the summer when crews struck water mains in parts of Columbia.
Briggs said she has been parking at a neighbor’s throughout the week because of the sinkhole at her end of the street, a cul-de-sac off Nursery Hill Road behind CrossRoads Intermediate School. She then carries her work computer over upturned gravel to reach her house, avoiding the potholes opened up by the water line strike. She has a roommate who has rarely been back to the house since because of the damage and the difficulty of reaching it.
“I got back (that night) and my entire property was cordoned off,” she said. “I couldn’t even park in my front yard.”
The residents’ mail hasn’t been delivered since the strike because the mail carrier hasn’t been able to get down the street, and she was told to make the seven-mile trek to pick up her delivery at the post office off Broad River Road. “I couldn’t put my garbage out on the road Monday because there’s nowhere to put it,” Briggs said.
Columbia Water, which provides water service to the area, responded to the scene last week to assess the damage. The water department did not respond to questions from The State on Wednesday, but told WIS-TV earlier in the week that the city would take on responsibility for repairs because it was determined the water line was not properly marked. Crews were busy repairing Willow Bend Court when The State visited on Wednesday.
Briggs said she had not heard from the city or the internet company since her road was virtually destroyed, and was considering filing a claim with the city.
“They ruined a big pretty butterfly bush I had in my yard, and I feel like somebody should buy me another one,” she said.
This story was originally published September 19, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
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