SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. - A big mess opened up in the middle of the road in Shelbyville Sunday as several hundred feet around an underground flume collapsed after torrential rains.
Officials said this wasn’t the first time it's happened.
Shelbyville City Manager, Jay Johnson, said this time it happened during a downpour around 9 a.m. Sunday, and he added another collapse like this was exactly what he had feared.
The road collapsed over the flume, across Lane Parkway, and in between the Shelbyville police and fire departments.
It actually swallowed up a police car, and for much of the afternoon the jail, police and fire departments were without water, which was expected to be quickly resolved.
No injuries have been reported.
This was the third time a section of the flume that leads storm water into the Duck River has collapsed this year, and Johnson said this will be expected to take weeks if not months to get back to normal.
“We’ll have to dig up the road, fix whatever's wrong underneath it, and rebuild the road, so weeks if not months,” Johnson said.
Officials added all the repairs to the flume have been putting a big strain on the city budget.
Drone photos of the scene were provided to NewsChannel 5 by John Smith with The Self Defense Superstore.
