WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The earth behind a row of homes in Prince George’s County cracked open early Monday morning, sucking the backs of homes into the rift. Any closer and Vincent Gatto’s home might have been swallowed, too — or wiped out by a falling tree.

“I’m fortunate it didn’t go eight feet downhill to the 250-foot poplar,” Gatto said. “If that had come down, I wouldn’t be here.”

Like other residents on the 5000 block of Yorkville Road in Camp Springs, Gatto was awakened by the knocking of county officials around 5:45 a.m. A 10-foot-deep, 40-foot-wide sinkhole that was 200 yards long had opened up in their backyards. Four homes had to be evacuated and one home was condemned as its back porch sunk.

In Virginia, the storm surge in Prince William County washed out a portion of Dale Boulevard at 4 a.m. Monday, ripping out nearly 20 feet of dirt beneath all four lanes of asphalt on a stretch of the Dale City roadway used by 26,000 vehicles a day.

No one was injured, but traffic patterns will be severely altered, state transportation officials said, adding it would take at least a week to study the situation and reopen the roadway.

“The damage was probably enough to fit two school buses in that hole,” Supervisor John Jenkins, D-Neabsco, said. “God was just looking out after the people of Prince William County because anybody that would have come along there obviously would have been severely injured.”

fklopott@dcexaminer.com

dgenz@dcexaminer.com