By ,
Published October 10, 2016
The National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Ky., has begun the extraction of eight rare Corvettes that were swallowed by a 40-foot wide sinkhole that opened up under the facility last month.
No one was injured in the incident that occurred in the early hours of February 12th before the museum was opened.
The three most accessible cars will be removed this week, and the entire process will be streamed live on the web.
You can watch the Corvette extraction live here, here, and here.
The first car out was a 2009 Corvette ZR1 "Blue Devil" that was sitting on top of the rubble and remained in such good condition it was able to be started and driven away from the hole.
Crews will next tackle a 40th Anniversary Corvette that's also uncovered, but a five-ton slab from the museum floor is resting on a black 1962 Corvette, and must be removed simultaneously with the car, complicating the process.
After the first three cars are recovered, the museum will start the more difficult task of digging out the remaining five, which are buried much deeper under the collapsed floor and earth. Among them are the 1 millionth and the 1.5 millionth Corvettes built.
The long-term plan is to refill the hole and repair the existing building on top of it, but there is no exact timeframe for the completion of the process.
Although the museum is a privately-run, non-profit organization, General Motors has pledged to repair the cars damaged in the accident.
See: The moment sinkhole opens under museum
https://www.foxnews.com/auto/corvette-museum-begins-recovering-cars-from-sinkhole