>Linda Medard Frantz Medard’s move into his new apartment took a surprising turn today.

A man and a moving truck got caught in separate sink holes on the same block earlier today, causing the truck to be towed and the pedestrian to be taken to the hospital.

Linda Medard The rear wheel lodged in the sinkhole.

This morning, Frantz Medard was moving into an apartment at 70 East Seventh Street, between First and Second Avenues, when he heard one of his movers yell from the street, “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” He looked out the window to see the moving truck tilting to the side.

“We thought it was a flat tire, looking from the hallway,” he said. “Then we saw half the tire in the ground.”

Melvin Felix The sinkhole, after the truck had been extracted.

The truck, belonging to the Westchester Moving and Delivery company, had fallen into a sinkhole that, according to the fire department, was four feet deep, and six feet wide.

Though the movers jumped out and took out most of Mr. Medard’s belongings from the back of the truck — leaving only a couch, a dresser and a bag — the truck “kept on sinking,” said the driver, Darius McLean.

After two hours, officers from the police department, ConEd, and the Department of Environmental Protection arrived. After a check for gas leaks, the truck was towed out.

Melvin Felix Investigators eye the sinkhole.

Mr. Medard was moving to the East Village from Westchester in order to shorten his work commute to Midtown.

His mother, Linda Medard, was helping him. “I told him to stay and live with Mommy and he didn’t listen. And so this is what happens!”

Ms. Medard said that around 11 a.m., an older man who was walking across the street got his foot stuck in a separate pothole on the block.

“He laid there for 10 minutes,” she said. “The poor thing, he was so hot.”

She said an ambulance took him away in a stretcher, wearing a neck brace. The fire department confirmed that a person was taken to Beth Israel hospital with minor injuries.

Melvin Felix Another shot of the struck truck.

Barbara Feinman’s hat store was taped off and inaccessible for a brief period as a result of the large sinkhole. She said the smaller one that snared the pedestrian was an ongoing problem. “I’ve been watching this like a movie, forever,” she said, adding, “It breaks, it collapses. I’d say, in my memory, this has been done at least 10 times. The D.E.P. doesn’t know what the hole-diggers are doing, the hole-diggers don’t know what the D.E.P. is doing, and it never gets fixed. And it happens over and over and over again and it’s my tax dollars at work.”