A former Love Island winner has had to move out of his house due to a sinkhole “in his driveway”.
Liam Reardon, 25, won the 2021 series of the reality show alongside girlfriend Millie Court, 28.
Speaking on the pair’s podcast, Mr Reardon said he and his family had only moved into their new home in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, “a few months ago”.
Hours before the sinkhole first appeared on Saturday 30 November, he “drove over the part where the hole is”, he said.
“We get a call at 2pm, saying we’ve got a small sinkhole at the end of our drive, and from there it progressively got worse and worse throughout the evening,” he added.
The situation deteriorated on Sunday morning while Mr Reardon and his family were having breakfast.
“All of a sudden our front gates and our front wall… disappeared into the hole, and our driveway started eating away,” he said.
“So then everyone’s on the street like ‘Get out of the house’.”
Mr Reardon is currently living in an Airbnb after the family were forced to leave the property.
“We can’t go back to the house now. The house has been emptied and apparently they’re going to knock the house down,” he added.
“Luckily the tarmac didn’t break as I drove over it because I’d have ended up in a hole.”
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Residents in a total of 29 properties were evacuated by the council’s housing officers, with safety an “absolute priority” for the local authority.
Homeowners in the lower end of the Nant Morlais cul-de-sac were not able to safely return home until early this week at the earliest, the council confirmed.
Leader of Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council, Brent Carter, said the sinkhole had resulted from “the sheer volume of material that was washed down from the mountain during Storm Bert”.
