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There were no reports of any casualties, West Mercia Police said

A major incident has been declared over what police have called a sinkhole at a canal in Shropshire, leaving boats either stricken in a gaping cavity or teetering on the edge of a drop.

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

Two narrowboats at the scene were said to have sunk into the hole shortly after 04:00 GMT, with another two at the edge. Water there looks to have drained away completely.

Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) said it was responding to a landslip and confirmed a canal was affected. Scott Hurford, area manager at SFRS, which sent 50 firefighters, said crews received reports at about 04:20 GMT that a canal bank had collapsed and there were large volumes of water in surrounding fields.

According to West Mercia Police, there are no reports of casualties at the scene, in an area of Whitchurch called Chemistry. The force asked people to avoid the area and seek alternate routes.

The Canal and River Trust described the incident as a breach on the canal, and said its priority was the safety of boaters and those in the immediate area. "We are carrying out initial investigations into the possible cause of the breach and will provide more details in due course," it 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."

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."

Andy Hall, a councillor in Whitchurch, said: "We've got two boats at the bottom of the sink 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 the fire service had put in a flood gate to stop the flow of more from the compromised waterway.

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

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."

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Police have asked people to avoid the area

This never happened on Rosie and Jim

Looks like a mega-money repair will be needed.  Not sure what recourse to funds the C&RT has, these days.  I imagine they're not all that well off

Boat stranded on canal hole edge pulled to safety

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The Pacemaker was left perilously close to tipping into the large hole

A narrowboat that was left teetering on the edge of a giant hole after part of a canal in Shropshire collapsed has been pulled to safety.

Paul Stowe's boat, the Pacemaker, was perilously close to falling into the hole on the Llangollen Canal in Whitchurch, which opened up on Monday after an "embankment failure". Mr Stowe, originally from Solihull, escaped barefoot with his wife, son, and two cats at about 04:10 GMT after he woke and heard rushing water "equivalent to the Niagara Falls".

Shropshire Council said the boat, which the family live on, was rescued at about 22:00 on Tuesday using a specialist winch operation. Once in location, the winch was able to haul the boat along the drained canal away from the breach hole," the authority said in a statement. "The boat is now safely located next to the lift bridge," the council said, adding that it would be refloated in the new year, when a dam would be constructed beyond the boat.

Overnight, water was pumped into dammed sections created by the Canal and River Trust on Tuesday, and as of 06:00 on Wednesday, water levels were recovering. "This means that one of the boats near to the breach site, plus six further up the canal, are now beginning to refloat," it said. "They are expected to be fully afloat by later today."

Mr Stowe previously told the BBC that all of his and his family's possessions were on the boat, and that they had escaped with only the clothes on their backs. He said they had no phones or credit cards, and added his birthday was on Christmas Day. "I'm not sure I'll ever moor in this area again, I'm not sure I'll ever moor on an embankment again," he said. "I'll be honest with you, it's very debatable [that] I'll ever want to go on a boat again."

The authority added that investigations had begun into what caused the collapse. "This will continue after the new year together with the initial plans to recover the two boats in the breach hole and the long and costly process of rebuilding and reinstating the canal."

"Now the initial emergency response, including the concern for boaters' immediate safety, has passed, our teams have been working hard to refill the Llangollen Canal around the site of the breach," said Campbell Robb, chief executive of the Canal and River Trust. "This will mean the boats in the immediate area are refloating, and navigation along other affected areas will be restored."

He said the trust would be providing regular updates and assurance to the local community and boating community in the coming weeks. "Thankfully, breaches of this scale are relatively rare, but, when they do occur, they're expensive and complicated to fix," he said.

The trust previously told the BBC that repairs could take months.

Probably because of complaints (from a certain member   ) that none-travel, none-south-west topics that could dilute the forum's inetrests be kept to one or two places - and "Introductions and Chat" and "And Also" were the two chosen places.  So correct for the thread to be started here, and as it's likely to be a long runner with a number of follow ups, it would get lost and confuse a general canal thread.  


Ah ... where??   I think we both come from the viewpoint that the canals are not really a means of transport these days.