Staff at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green moved an additional 20 cars out of the iconic Sky Dome Wednesday after a 40-foot sinkhole swallowed eight of the sports cars on display inside the the facility. Some time before 5:30 a.m. CST, the sinkhole started to form and by 5:44 a.m. motion detectors started going off, the museum said. No one was in or around the museum at the time, said executive director Wendell Strode.
When they got to the museum, emergency personnel discovered a 40-foot sinkhole between 25 and 30 feet deep, Strode said. “It’s pretty significant,” he said. Engineers at the site have determined the building did not sustain any structural damage since the sinkhole was in the middle of the Sky Dome facility,museum spokeswoman Katie Frassinelli said.
“The structure of the building is intact and it’s fine,” she said. Video from the museum security cameras is below.
Museum spokesman Bob Bubnis said officials anticipate repairing the damage caused by the sinkhole, but said no timetable or plans for the repairs have been set.”These are things we’ll look at moving forward,” he said, adding they don’t anticipate having to move to a different site.
The museum issued a statement that said six of the damaged cars were owned by the museum and two — a 1993 ZR-1 Spyder and a 2009 ZR1 Blue Devil — were on loan from General Motors.
The other cars damaged were a 1962 black Corvette, a 1984 PPG Pace Car, a 1992 White 1 Millionth Corvette, a 1993 Ruby Red 40th Anniversary Corvette, a 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette and a 2009 white 1.5 Millionth Corvette, the museum said.
The museum is about a mile from the General Motors Bowling Green Assembly Plant where the car is built.