This shows a pipe which was buried but suddenly emerged above ground at a sewer construction site in Osaka, western Japan Wednesday, March 11, 2026.Yukie Nishizawa/Kyodo News via AP

A giant, underground pipe rose more than 32 feet out of a construction site in a busy area of the Japanese city of Osaka, nearly reaching an elevated road overnight, unseen by any witnesses.

The steel pipe's unexpected growth spurt was reported to police early Wednesday by a pedestrian who saw broken pieces of asphalt falling from the cylinder, baffling people passing by and causing traffic congestion.

One office worker who passed by the site told NHK public television that he could not understand how it happened. Another man who works nearby said he first wondered if a new road support might have been built overnight.

City officials said the pipe's surge scattered concrete debris beneath the elevated road, but no injuries were reported, the Japan Times reported.

The pipe, with a diameter of 11.5 feet, towered as high as 42 feet at one point, according to the Osaka construction department, forcing road closures.

"Cars will probably be blocked for a while," a man who works nearby told the Kyodo news agency.

The pipe's unexpected elevation from the ground occurred at a sewer construction site where workers had been connecting an existing sewer line with a channel designed to hold excess rainwater to prevent flooding.

The pipe was being used as a retaining structure to keep the surrounding soil from collapsing during the operation, officials said. A short time earlier, workers had drained water from the pipe, which may have caused the empty apparatus to float, they said.

Ryozo Kawakita, a resident who lives nearby, told the Japan Times he was unable to take his vehicle out because of the road closures.

"I can't believe this," he told the outlet.

By Thursday it had been lowered back to just several feet above the ground after firefighters cut a hole on the side and injected water to push it back into the ground.

City officials said they plan to cut the last 5.2 feet of the pipe that remain visible, an operation that would cause a road closure for several more days.

Sinkholes are a more common occurrence on streets in Japan. Last year, a massive sinkhole swallowed a truck in a city outside Tokyo, trapping the driver inside for more than 24 hours.

In 2016, an enormous sinkhole appeared on a five-lane street in Hakata, Japan. That sinkhole caused blackouts and traffic delays but crews worked around the clock to fix the gaping hole in the busy street.


This shows a pipe, center, which was buried but suddenly emerged above ground at a sewer construction site in Osaka, western Japan Wednesday, March 11, 2026. Yukie Nishizawa/Kyodo News via AP

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