ou know it’s been a rough week for the pavement when the vehicle built to rescue everyone else ends up needing a rescue of its own. That’s exactly what happened in New Orleans’ Central City neighborhood, where a fire truck found itself nose-down in a pothole so big it looked more like a sinkhole than anything you’d expect to find on a city street.
The scene played out at the intersection of Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard and Clara Street, and the images that circulated online were the kind that make you do a double take. A multi-ton fire truck, normally the one showing up to handle the emergency, was instead the emergency. For a while, it wasn’t clear how crews were even going to get it out.
Details on exactly what caused the road to give way are still thin. Some folks online speculated it might be heat-related road stress, while others pointed the finger at general road maintenance issues, which, let’s be honest, isn’t exactly an unfamiliar conversation in a city known for its aging infrastructure. Whatever the cause, the hole opened up big enough to make people online wonder if the city might need to bring in a crane just to pull the truck free…