A gaping hole in the sidewalk near popular hiking trail Runyon Canyon was covered up Thursday after residents said they dodged the hole for a week.
NBC4 learned about a gaping hole in the sidewalk from a tweet from a neighbor, with a photo taken on Hillside Avenue.
"4 foot drop into sidewalk," read the tweet. "No streetlights here."
Roots from a ficus tree had buckled the sidewalk, causing a cement cover to collapse into an underground water meter storage space.
Residents told NBC4 they’d been dodging the hole for at least a week.
"We definitely had to be careful where we were walking," said Elizabeth Kamens, who was visiting with her family from New York.
"I hate that I have to look down consistently for these cracks and things," Angeleno Suki Avery said. "It’s gotten worse in [the last] eight years."
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The city of L.A. has committed $1.4 billion to repair sidewalks over the next 30 years.
Within an hour of NBC4 calling the Bureau of Street Services, a crew appeared to block access to the hole; LADWP workers arrived shortly after to apply a temporary safety fix: a plywood cover.
A Bureau of Street Services spokeswoman told the I-Team the department receives between 40 and 50 complaints about sidewalk problems each week. She says crews aim to respond within hours.
The spokeswoman added that the Hillside Avenue hole will be covered with new asphalt within 24 hours.
If you have a sidewalk complaint, you can report it to the Bureau of Street Services at 800-996-2489.
