COLONIAL HEIGHTS, Va. -- A Colonial Heights man reached out to the CBS 6 Problem Solvers about a ravine in his neighborhood that keeps getting larger. In fact, it's already swallowed up much of the safety fence that the city installed.
"It's very dangerous, it definitely needs to be fixed," Michael Bishop, a concerned neighbor, said.
The ravine is in the woods, an area considered to be a cut-through, oftentimes for young kids.
"They cut through at night here so they can't see. They could easily fall through and it could be dangerous," Desiree O'Neal, another concerned resident, said. "It's kind of a disaster waiting to happen and we've been fortunate nothing has happened yet. It's a better safe than sorry type of situation."
However, the ravine poses a dangerous problem. At the bottom of the ten-foot drop is a metal pole. Neighbors are worried that the hole in the ground could lead to someone getting seriously hurt.
"I'm just scared to death somebody's going to come through here in the middle of the night or something and step into it and it's going to hurt them bad," Bishop said.
In the past, the city installed a safety fence.
"It's just continually getting deeper and deeper and even the fencing and stuff they put up back here, even that's washed into the hole now," Bishop said.
Colonial Heights' director of public works said that plans are being made to try and correct the problem.
"We certainly want to make it safe for people to walk in the area. We will look to stabilize it. That is the most cost-efficient way to address it right now," director Todd Flippen said.
On Monday afternoon, city crews arrived at the scene and put safety fencing back in place.
Flippen said the city is looking to get contractors involved in the next couple of weeks to get an estimate for what it will cost to fix the problem.
