​Two young people feel “lucky to be alive” after the car they were in was swallowed by a sinkhole that appeared early Wednesday on a road in the Vomero district of the Italian city of Naples, ANSA reported Wednesday, according to Agerpres.

The two, who were returning from a party after an exam at the university, were rescued by the military who happened to be in the area as part of Operation Safe Streets.

A parked car also fell into the pit. “It’s a miracle we’re alive. It could have been much worse,” said Giulio Delle Donne, one of the two youths, who is also a municipal councilor.

“We are alive thanks to the quick intervention of army personnel. Less than a second after (the car plunged into the sinkhole) a tree fell and broke a water pipe. Three soldiers from the Italian Army’s Campaign Group, members of Operation Safe Streets, who were in the area, came and saved us. A bystander also came by. It was shortly after 4 a.m. A water main burst and we could have been flooded. Fortunately, we only got away with a few scratches. After all these events, we hope that the condition mapping of the structures and systems will finally be resolved “, the boy added.

Naples Mayor Gaetano Manfredi said the problem is that the southern Italian city has “a sewage system that has not been serviced for many years. We are in the process of implementing the project of permanent monitoring of the sewage and water supply network, and this will also allow preventive maintenance,” he added.

With variable diameters, from a few meters to over 1 km, depths up to 100 m, and surface areas from 0.17 to 150,000 m2, sinkholes are exokarst landforms with a more or less funnel-shaped, rounded depression resulting from the dissolution of soluble rocks. from the surface, especially limestone.