A Somerset women had a lucky escape when her car fell into a huge hole minutes after she had parked at a laundry.

Edith Dolmo's car plunged into a 15-foot square sinkhole moments after a parked motor bike broke the tarmac crust, just an inch thick in some places, outside the Somerset Laundromat on the main road.

The bike hit the bottom of the eight foot deep sandy hole while the car's front rested on a pipe preventing it from falling right down the hole.

Police Duty Inspector Simon Groves said: "It is only that pipe holding it up." He said the sandy soil looked very loose.

He said no one was hurt in the accident but there was minor damage to the bike while the car seemed to be all right after they were dragged out by workmen.

The accident follows last week's landslide at Bermuda College which killed a teachers' aide.

Ms Dolmo, 63, told The Royal Gazette: "I had just got out of the car and come into the laundrette when someone said their bike was in a hole.

"I said 'what do you mean your bike is the hole?' Then I saw my car.

"I am a little bit shaken up. It's frightening when you think of what happened last week. It's after so much rain. You have to be careful where you park and what you do.

"I have never seen anything like this before."

Launderette manager Angela Darrell said she had been parked in the same spot as Ms Dolmo's Daihatsu just moments earlier before nipping out on an errand.

She said: "I had only got as far as the bridge when I got a call about it. I was surprised when I came back to see. I park on that spot everyday."

She said the area has been roped off after the rest of the car park had been declared safe.

Authorities are now investigating whether the soil had come away through rain water or from leaking pipes.

Ms Darrell said the pipes from the washing machines went through the other side.

Last night director of Planning Rudolph Hollis said sinkholes like this appeared from time to time in Bermuda.

He said he would send inspectors to look at the site but he said it was more a concern for the Health and Safety Department.

One bystander Lorna Wilson said: "This is amazing. The entire south shore is affected."

But she said it didn't make her worry about her own home 'Gemstones' which is built on sandy soil in Southampton overlooking Cross Bay.

She said: "I am actually building on the back of the home to make it a little bit more stable, you never know. It's primarily all sand."

But she said the footings four and a half feet deep and three and a half feet wide made it stable.