ABC-13 helps get giant pothole outside business repaired

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- You can call this the papa of potholes. It's long enough for someone to lay down in, and deep enough for cars to get stuck. It's outside a northeast Harris County gas station and the owner says he has been trying to get the county to fix it. But the county says it's much more complicated than a simple patch.

After days and days of rainy weather, you've probably seen a few more potholes around town lately. But the pothole of potholes is on East Mount Houston, and it's been there for a while.

"A couple of years. Maybe more than that. It's just getting bigger and bigger," says Barkat Ali.

Ali owns Star Food, a gas station at East Mount Houston and Suburban Road. The pothole is right on the edge of his property. Ali says he's reported it several times.

"They came one time and put the little orange things around, but nobody came to fix it," he says.

"I was driving one of my rigs with a trailer on it, and I landed in this pothole here," says Chris Foreman. "I had a problem getting out of it because it's so deep and there's water flowing through there. Like there's mud down there."

Foreman is a regular at the gas station. He says he drove into the hole in the middle of the night.

"I actually almost blew the transmission trying to get it out," Foreman said.

We called this area's commissioner, El Franco Lee, to find out why the county hasn't fixed the pothole. His spokesman, David Ellison confirms the Precinct 1 maintenance department had been told about it. He says it's tricky because it's in the county's right-of-way, but in the store's driveway.

After we called, maintenance put orange cones around the pothole. Ellison says they will cover it with a steel plate Friday and go from there to figure out who is responsible for repairs.

Ellison tells us Precinct 1 has gotten some calls about potholes but not an extraordinary number. Every city and precinct has their own way to report them. Precinct 1 has a cell phone app; Precinct 4 has a website; the city of Houston has 311. And of course you can go old school and call.