No sign of family as sinkhole search continues

No sign of family as sinkhole search continues

A car sticks out of a crater measuring about 1 kilometer by 500 meters that swallowed at least one house in St Jude north east of Montreal, on Monday May 11, 2010 - The Gazette/Phil Carpenter

SAINT-JUDE, Que. -- The search for a family of four who presumably were in their rural Quebec home when it plummeted into a large sinkhole Monday night, continued on Tuesday with no immediate sign of survivors.

But rescuers have located a dog, believed to be one of the two the family owned.

Crews were busy working to drain water and mud from the home in order to facilitate access.

The earth opened up on the pastoral farmland on the banks of the Yamaska River, approximately 77 kilometres northeast of Montreal at about 9 p.m. Monday night.

By early Tuesday, there were unconfirmed reports the Prefontaine family -- father Richard, his wife and two children, ages nine and 11 -- were in the basement of the home at the time of the catastrophe.

Around noon, police moved the security perimeter closer to the scene of the landslide. Provincial police spokesman Ronald McInnis said the crater is 500 metres wide by 100 metres wide and uniformly 30 metres deep.

Herman Gagnon, who lived on the neighbouring hill to the Prefontaines, said he heard a load groan about 9 p.m. and thought there had been an earthquake.

The noise came from his basement, so he went to check his pipes. They were fine. Mr. Gagnon got on the phone with a neighbour, who had also heard the mysterious sound.

Then he jumped in his car and drove from his home toward the town of St. Jude. Between Mr. Gagnon's home and the Prefontaines', there is normally a narrow creek and a bridge. But as he descended the hill and started to crest the other side where the family of four lives, he said he was stopped in his tracks.

In front of him lay "a different kind of blackness," Mr. Gagnon recounted at a security perimeter erected two kilometres from the sight of the sinkhole.

Mr. Gagnon has stopped at the edge of a giant precipice and found himself staring into the abyss.

Another resident lingering at the roadside barriers, who declined to give his name, said sinkholes and landslides are common in this area of southern Quebec.

He blamed "blue glaze" a very soft type of clay that lines the banks of the Yamaska River.

Civil security officials said the home was sitting in a zone known to represent a risk of mudslides.