Large Woman Falls Through NYC Sidewalk

Painful to imagine: An overweight woman fell through a Manhattan sidewalk last night and had to be rescued by firefighters using "sophisticated" equipment, the New York Post reports. The 31-year-old from Queens was waiting for her bus, huddled against a wall from the rain, when the sidewalk collapsed. "It happened so fast she did not scream or anything," said a witness from a bar next door, where everybody "got up to look."

An FDNY rescue team pulled her from the 6-foot hole using a unit that looked like a crane with cargo netting. "Pretty sophisticated stuff," said fire Chief Thomas Jemmott. “She is a very large person, but we were able to secure her and stabilize her and lift her out of the hole." The woman, described as weighing over 300 pounds, sustained shoulder injuries and was listed in stable condition at Cornell Hospital. (In 2011, a woman escaped injury when she found a 40-foot sinkhole—under her bed.)