On Wednesday, a burst underground pipe opened a sinkhole along the Arno River in Florence, Italy that swallowed dozens of parked cars and caused the Stanford in Florence building to be temporarily evacuated.

Stanford students’s main campus in the city, the Breyer Center for Overseas Studies in Florence, is directly in front of the sinkhole. The building reopened this morning after it could be verified as structurally sound.

The 650-foot-long sinkhole caused no injuries, Florence mayor Dario Nardella said over Twitter. However, the early-morning incident left the city a host of headaches to deal with. In the aftermath, surrounding buildings lacked water or lighting, according to the Associated Press. In addition to to evacuating two buildings, authorities blocked access to the affected area and temporarily shut off the neighborhood’s water supply in order to attempt repairs on the pipe, The New York Times reported.

Nardella emphasized to the Associated Press that the sinkhole stemmed from a cut main water pipe, rather than leaks in banks of the Arno River.

Later in the day on Wednesday, cranes began to recover the sunken cars. Emergency measures to come will include delivery of thousands of water bottles to Florence schools, The New York Times said.

 

 

Contact Hannah Knowles at [email protected].

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the distance of the Stanford in Florence center from the sinkhole. The Daily regrets this error.