A portion of Highway 101 in Southern Oregon is completely shut down after a massive sinkhole opened up, swallowing any semblance of land that was once there and causing minor delays.
"It's massive. There's just no other way to describe it," Jared Castle, Department of Transportation spokesman for Southwest Oregon, told NBC News.
The state closed down the section in Harbor, Ore., at 9 p.m., opting to re-route traffic to a detour that runs parallel to the highway, reported NBC's Southern Oregon affiliate KGW-TV. However the trouble reportedly started earlier in the day after a storm dropped about 1.5 inches of rain on the area, causing a landslide, about 50 feet away from where the sinkhole formed almost simultaneously.
Castle noted that sinkholes and landslides are common in the region due to the area's geology.
"It's just part of the battle of having the Oregon Coast Highway located where it's at. It's a road built in a place where Mother Nature never intended for there to be a road," he said.
This is the second sinkhole to open in the area in just as many months. The first one opened on Dec. 13 near the Fireside Diner and Rice Bowl restaurants, eating portions of the nearby parking lot. It has grown since then and now with the new one nearby, Castle fears that it may have to temporarily shut down.
"[It] looks pretty rough for the restaurant. If it's going to impact him to the point he has to close, there's a process for that to help him out. But it's too early to tell," according to the Curry Coastal Pilot.
There have been no injuries or evacuations and transportation workers are in the process of both repairing the sinkholes and the landslide. The Stretch of Highway 101 is expected to remain closed until March.