A woman from Guatemala has been lucky to escape unharmed after a metre-wide sinkhole suddenly opened underneath her bed.
Inocenta Hernandez, 65, though a neighbour's gas cylinder had exploded when she heard a loud boom at her home in Guatemala City, AFP reported.
"We rushed out to look and saw nothing," she said.
"A gentleman told me that the noise came from my house, and we searched until we found it under my bed."
The sinkhole that had formed in her bedroom was 12.2m deep and nearly a metre wide.
"Thank God there are only material damages, because my grandchildren were running around the house, into that room and out to the patio," she said.
Guatemala City is prone to massive sinkholes forming, with a three-storey building swallowed by one in May last year.
Sinkholes typically form from a chemical dissolution of carbonate rocks underground, often triggered by surface drainage from heavy rainfall.