A six-year-old boy fell completely into a sinkhole that opened up on Verna Court near the Fair Grounds during weekend flooding, and it was his own mother who pulled him from the hole. Ginger Woodall, who lives on the street, said she alerted the city Sunday afternoon after two apparent sinkholes appeared as floodwaters rose, and her son went under while the family tried to move to higher ground.
Woodall described the moment her son fell into the sinkhole as he tried to cross to the drier side of the flooded street, according to WDSU. She rescued him herself, and the station reports he was not injured in the fall. Woodall said she is thankful for the city's quick response to the hazard once she reported it.
Crews Move Fast to Secure the Block
Crews filled both sinkholes on Verna Court, and the Sewerage and Water Board coordinated with the city and its contractor to secure the area, per the same report. The block sits within a joint infrastructure project already underway in the neighborhood — part of a broader effort to rebuild the Fair Grounds area's aging underground water, sewer, and drainage lines before streets get repaved.
That work falls under the $2.3 billion Joint Infrastructure Recovery Response program, known locally as RoadworkNOLA, which pairs the city's Department of Public Works with the Sewerage and Water Board to replace damaged subsurface utilities ahead of repaving, according to the City of New Orleans Department of Public Works. In the Fair Grounds and surrounding neighborhoods specifically, the city has launched the $23 million Bayou St. John, Fairgrounds, 7th Ward Group B roadwork project — the largest single contract awarded under the program — to rebuild subsurface utilities and restore at least 122 neighborhood blocks.
A System Strained by Age and Weather
The ground giving way beneath a flooded street is not an isolated New Orleans problem. More than one-third of the city's water pipes are over 100 years old, and replacing that buried network costs an estimated $20 million per mile, according to WWL-TV. In March, Sewerage and Water Board Executive Director Randy Hayman told the New Orleans City Council the utility had reached a crisis point following five major water main breaks earlier in the year, the station reported.
Those failures have had dramatic consequences elsewhere in the city. In January, a major water main break in Uptown New Orleans washed away supporting soil beneath Panola Street, collapsing the roadway and opening a sinkhole large enough to swallow a passenger vehicle, WWL-TV reported at the time.
Years of Friction Between City Agencies
Coordination between the two agencies tasked with this work has not always been smooth. A September 2022 audit by the New Orleans Office of Inspector General found long-standing problems between Public Works and the Sewerage and Water Board, noting that uncoordinated repairs historically meant Public Works repaving streets only for the water utility to cut open the new asphalt to fix pipes underneath.
The same inspector general's office found in a March 2022 report that 65 percent of New Orleans streets were in poor or very poor condition, and that Public Works took an average of 204 days to resolve resident complaints about potholes and street subsidence. The city has since secured a Federal Emergency Management Agency extension through 2028 to finish roughly $500 million in remaining post-Katrina street and utility work under the infrastructure program, Cantrell said in June.
Residents who spot non-emergency sinkholes or street subsidence can report them through NOLA-311, which routes the complaint to Public Works for surface pavement damage or to the Sewerage and Water Board when the problem traces back to a leaking underground pipe, according to city guidance.
