TWO Tredegar homes were evacuated after a 50ft deep hole opened up in their front gardens.

Yazmine Price was woken on Monday night after her neighbours heard a loud bang and found a deep hole in their front gardens.

Torrential rain on Monday caused the ground to crack in Ashvale which further collapsed on Tuesday creating a hole about 12ft round and some 50ft deep.Atypical double decker bus is 14ft tall.

Miss Price was asleep when her 17-year-old son Adam Price woke her at about 11.30pm to tell her what had happened.

Her neighbour’s daughter Samantha Thomas, from the adjoining terrace house, had heard the bang and alerted her family.

The families contacted Blaenau Gwent council and were moved out of their homes. Both families have been unable to return home and have had to stay with relatives or friends elsewhere.

The area was fenced off with a danger and no entry sign put up and temporary traffic lights in place on the main road.

Miss Price said: “It’s lucky my neighbour heard it. I could have just walked straight out into it.”

She said it was frightening to think her son had walked in the house just 15 minutes before the hole formed.

She said it has split up her family with them having to stay with different people at a time when her 16-year-old daughter Georgie is about to start her GCSE exams.

Miss Price said she has been told her house is structurally safe but it is not known when she will be able to return.

Anita Thomas has owned the house next door for almost nine years which she shares with her partner Paul Taylor, 42, and daughters Samantha Thomas, 21, and Stephanie Thomas, 23. She said: “When we bought the house nothing was shown on the plans otherwise we wouldn’t have bought it. This is going to devalue the house.”

Ms Thomas, 42, said the hole started off about two feet long near the adjoining garden wall but got bigger and bigger.

She said: “If we hadn’t heard it and walked out of there we could have gone down with it.”

John Delaney fromthe Coal Authority said work started yesterday on filling the hole to stabilise the ground while investigations are carried out to see if it is mine-related.

Mr Delaney said if it is found to be coal-mining related it will remediate the ground and make good the damage caused.