A sinkhole roughly 8–10 m wide and several metres deep has opened on the AJ Burkitt Reserve sporting oval in Heidelberg, directly adjacent to the North East Link tunnel alignment in Melbourne’s northeast. Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority has confirmed the “surface hole” is in the vicinity of active tunnelling operations, leading to a work pause while engineers and emergency crews carry out geotechnical investigations and monitoring. No injuries or structural damage have been reported, but the area remains fully cordoned off pending cause determination and stability assessment.

More than 140,000 people have been evacuated from low-lying towns and rural communities in northwestern Morocco after extreme rainfall and emergency releases from multiple upstream dams caused major flooding along several river valleys. Rapid drawdown and high downstream discharges are stressing ageing embankment protections, inundating agricultural terraces and damaging road and bridge approaches, with several river crossings reportedly overtopped. Geotechnical teams now face urgent inspections of dam abutments, spillway structures and saturated slopes, alongside rapid debris clearance to reopen key access routes for relief and repair works.

A Manchester-based grab hire firm, Salford Grab Hire Limited, has been fined £10,000 plus £3,475.90 costs after a one-tonne excavator bucket, used to prop a raised tipper truck body during repair, became dislodged and crushed a mechanic in October 2023. The worker sustained multiple fractures to his hand, shoulder blade, ribs, shin and thigh, a crushed ankle and foot, and a pulmonary blood clot. HSE found the bucket lacked a quick hitch or retaining pin and that no appropriate tipper body support equipment or safe system of work had been used.