Man pulled from sinkhole after dramatic Cornwall campsite collapse

A former miner was rescued from a sinkhole after the ground collapsed beneath him at a Cornwall campsite, leaving his car balanced at the edge of the opening above.

Ian Haynes, 62, a former miner from Nottinghamshire, was near the end of a two-week stay at Higher Trevaskis Caravan and Camping Park in Connor Downs, near Hayle, when the ground failed on 24 July. He had parked his BMW in the same spot throughout the holiday and was due to leave the following day when he noticed the front of the car had dropped down. CornwallLive reports that the opening began as a small, pothole-sized crater at the car's wheel and had grown to roughly the size of a vehicle by the next day.

Mr Haynes telephoned the site owner to inspect the problem. While standing beside the car waiting, the concrete gave way beneath him and he fell into water at the bottom of the shaft, with the BMW above him at the rim. He told CornwallLive he could not swim, but managed to grab a plank of timber and pull himself to the side.

Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service said it was called to Connor Downs, Hayle, at around 6pm on 24 July, and that firefighters used line rescue equipment to recover a casualty who was approximately 30 ft (9 m) down a sinkhole, leaving him in the care of the ambulance service. Devon and Cornwall Police said officers attended Gwinear Road shortly after 6pm the same day to support the emergency response, and that a number of people were cleared from the area for safety.

Mr Haynes waited around 55 minutes while a team of more than 60 emergency services personnel secured the site and brought him out. He said his own mining experience shaped the operation: he asked crews to lay a ladder across the opening so that the rope would not bear directly on the edges of the shaft, which he believed would otherwise have caved in, and he fastened the harness himself before being winched up.

The two available figures for the depth of the fall do not agree. Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service puts the rescue depth at approximately 30 ft (9 m). Mr Haynes believes he fell considerably further, estimating 100 to 140 ft (30 to 43 m) on the basis that a friend dropped a stone down the shaft the following day and timed roughly three seconds before it struck water. He told CornwallLive he had asked the fire service to measure the shaft and to release the rescue footage, and had not had a reply. The fire service figure is the operational measurement taken by the crew that performed the rescue and is the one to rely on for the rescue depth; no published survey of the shaft's full depth to standing water exists.

Mr Haynes escaped with cuts and bruising. The park said he was taken to hospital, given the all-clear and returned to the site soon afterwards. He said the psychological effects have been longer-lasting, describing continuing disturbed sleep — waking at 4am with the sensation of falling — and attributing it to post-traumatic stress disorder. He said the park itself could not have handled the incident better and that staff were caring and concerned throughout.

A spokesperson for Higher Trevaskis Caravan and Camping Park said an unrecorded, historical mining feature had opened up in an isolated area of the park, that the site's emergency safety protocols were activated immediately and the emergency services called, and that specialist engineers are already managing the permanent capping process — the sealing of a shaft or void with an engineered structural cover. Mr Haynes describes the feature as a mineshaft. No independent engineering assessment of the collapse has been published.

The following paragraphs are general engineering context and are not drawn from reporting of this incident.

A surface collapse of this type over a shallow mine void is usually termed a crown hole. It forms when the cover material bridging a void — a shaft, a stope, or an adit, which is a horizontal tunnel driven into a hillside for access or drainage — progressively migrates downwards until the arch above it can no longer carry its own weight and the remaining crust fails. Where a hard surfacing such as concrete or tarmac is present, the void beneath can enlarge for a considerable period with little sign at the surface, because the slab spans the growing hole until it is overloaded or undermined at the edges. Vehicle loading, water infiltration, deterioration of timber or masonry shaft linings, and long-term erosion of infill can all contribute. The mechanism in this particular case would require site investigation to establish.

Cornwall has several centuries of metalliferous mining, principally for tin and copper, and workings are unevenly recorded — early shafts in particular may not appear on any surviving plan. Where mining legacy is suspected, ground risk is normally addressed before land is used intensively or redeveloped, through desk study of available mining records, walkover survey, geophysics, probe drilling and boreholes, with treatment of identified features by capping or grouting.