incident

A major incident has been declared at a Shropshire canal where a giant hole has emerged, with boats either stricken in the cavity or left teetering on the edge of the drop.

Pictures appear to show that the structural integrity of a stretch of waterway in Whitchurch has given way, raising flooding fears.

Two narrowboats at the scene were said to have sunk into the hole shortly after 04:00 GMT, with one witness estimating it to be 15ft (four metres) deep. Water looks to have drained away completely.

Fifty firefighters were deployed to the scene. There are no reports of casualties, according to police.

The Canal and River Trust has blamed the issue on what it described as an “embankment failure”.

Scott Hurford, area manager at Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service said crews received reports at about 04:20 that a canal bank had collapsed – and that there were large volumes of water in surrounding fields.

People who live on boats near to where the incident unfolded said they were first alerted to a problem by unusual noises, with some in the area fearing an earthquake, according to one report.

The sounds became so bad that people knew to flee their vessels, a witness told the BBC.

West Mercia Police has asked people to avoid the scene, located in an area of Whitchurch called Chemistry.

Mr Hurford told BBC Shropshire: “The information we’ve had back is that the canal bank failed and that’s what put the emergency call in.

“The water from the canal has leaked out of the canal into the surrounding fields… There are up to 15 people who had to be moved out of the way to safety, and there’s a number of canal boats that have been affected, some of those have gone into the field and some are at the bottom of the canal.”

He added: “Our job is the response phase, so we’re there to save life, protect property and the environment, but we will support in the recovery phase.”

Mark Durham, the Canal and River Trust’s principle engineer, said rather than sinkhole – a term used by police earlier – and landslip, a description initially used by the fire service, neither in the circumstances quite reflected what had gone on.

He said “embankment failure” was more apt, adding the embankment in question was a man-made one, and designed to “hold the canal up, which it’s done for over 200 years”.

That changed on Monday, although it was too early, he said, to know how the embankment had failed.

He added that after recovering the stricken boats, the next steps would be examining the area and rebuilding it.

Andy Hall, a councillor in Whitchurch, said: “We’ve got two boats at the bottom of the [hole] that have fallen down, and we’ve got two boats that are teetering on the edge that could go in at any time,” he told the BBC.

“Obviously [the fire service is] going to make those safe.”

He added: “[People] thought that there was an earthquake.

“To the right, we’ve got the field which has taken probably about a million gallons of water out of the canal.”

He said that no one was on board “the two boats that went down”, adding that people on the boats “teetering over the edge” had been helped to safety by fire crews.

Lorraine Barlow, who lives on a boat called The Singing Kettle and was moored near the site, said: “About 04:20 this morning I could feel that there was something amiss, there seemed to be a current coming from underneath the boat, and bubbling, it sounded really unusual.

“Then I was tilting to the middle of the canal, I could feel the ropes were getting tight.”

She said she left the boat and could see the fire service as well as search and rescue teams.

“There was no water on the canal,” she said.

“I was worried about the ropes and about my canal boat hanging there.

“It’s an awful thing, I was worried about the other people.”

Paul Storey, who lives on a boat about 90 yards (82 metres) away from the collapse, estimated that the affected area was between 150 to 180ft (45 to 55 metres) long, with the cavity about 15ft (four metres) deep.

He said: “We were awoken at about 04:20 this morning with a crash on the boat, things were sliding out of the cabinets… We got off the boat, walked about 100 yards in front,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live.

“We could hear the breach, the rush of water was amazing… We saw a boat that had gone over the edge and was in the bottom of the breach.

“We witnessed another boat being washed away.”

He added: “Because of the noise and the crashing of the boats, and the creaking of the ropes, people knew something was going on and got off the boats as quickly as they could.”

Mr Hall said the fire service had since put in a flood gate to stem the flow of more water from the compromised canal.

“The most important thing is that the canal itself has been secured by fire and rescue,” he said. “Their biggest worry was that the canal was going to burst even more and flood residents in the town.”

He said that contrary to speculation on social media, there had been no bridge collapse.

In addition, the Canal and River Trust’s Mr Durham, responding to social media claims the area was checked by trust inspectors in recent weeks, said: “We have a really robust inspection scheme.

“I’ve spoken to two people that inspected that embankment today and I’m satisfied that there were no causes for any intervention or undue concern at the time, but it is something that we need to look into.”

A spokesperson for the trust said: “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.”