We had a section of our driveway – which is directly above a storm drain – to collapse, leaving a foot-deep, foot in diameter, hole that the city came and fixed no charge back in the spring. Nothing major. That was before the May flood that left many sinkholes across this section of the state.
Then this week there’s the story of the major sinkhole in Germany. And not long ago there was a big one in Guatemala.
How close is you nearest sinkhole and are you alarmed with the number of them in recent weeks?
I have a series of small ones on my property, related to the demolition and burial of an old barn. By small, I mean that they are roughly 2 feet across, and typically 3feet deep. I found one the hard way, when the ground collapsed under my left foot. It hit bottom the same time as the boys smacked the side of the hole. UUUUUUNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGG…
I fill them in as I get dirt to do the job; however, I’m saving one as the place to dump my woodstove ashes this winter.
We’ve had a few in Toronto recently but the only thing scary about them is how fragile and outdated our water and sewer systems are. They’re old and need to be replaced but it’s a major price tag and so it gets delayed. I might feel differently if it was my car it appeared under but the odds are in my favour. So far…:eek:
Here’s the closest one to me. It’s probably about a ten minute drive from my house. It’s actually much bigger then the picture makes it look, or so I’ve heard, I never actually went and looked at it before they filled it in. They had to leave it alone for a few days while it ran out of gas since the wheels were still turning and no one wanted to go down and turn it off. The other problem they had with getting it out was that the electrical lines that went through that area fed the hospital so they had to figure out how to extract the Escalade without shutting down the hospital.
another picture
I live in Central Florida. The entire region looks like swiss cheese in aerial photos. Every once in a while one will open up on a roadway or under somebody’s house. It’s relatively common.
Damn! That’s scary as hell. It’s been a number of years, maybe 20, but on the way home from work one day, as I approached a red light with no other traffic in sight, as I slowed to approach the intersection I just happened to glance out the window at the lane next to me. There was a hole big enough to swallow a car or truck and I was just not aware of it until I got alongside it! Scared me big time. It was filled in and paved over by the time I saw it next day. I just had to wonder then, and do even more nowadays, how many there must be under roads, houses, downtown businesses, churches, whatever.
I would love to see some surveys of the actual underground in this area. There are caves everywhere. It wouldn’t surprise me if the typical acre of ground had some serious loss of supporting earth just below the surface.
North Florida here, and yep. There are literally hundreds within a few hours of where I sit right now. Most of them are full of water and logs and such, not houses and power lines, luckily. Swimming in a sink hole on a hot day is a wonderful thing. Most of them look a lot like this, but with added naked people.
North Floridian also living in a house built on sand and swiss cheese.
Haven’t seen one in my yard, but I do look for little tiny holes and depressions. There was one that opened up at a natural history museum a few miles from my house. It happens fast. One day, there was like a golf hole and a week later, they had to move the black bear pen because it would have gotten swallowed up.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. About 8 miles north of me is a 4,000 acre lake, which drained completely a few years back. There’s a sinkhole at the bottom and one day, someone pulled the plug and the lake just drained down the sinkhole. We had to have a couple of back-to-back tropical systems blow through before the lake refilled itself. Apparently, it’s on a regular cycle and this happens every 20-30 years or so.
I have to admit, when the lake drained and all the people who paid big bundles of cash for waterfront property without bothering to find out about the lake cycle were demanding - DEMANDING! - that something be done by the city to refill it, I laughed and laughed. Oh, how I laughed. Learn local ecology, folks. A lake today may not be a lake tomorrow. And then they talked about building houses in the “dry” lake bed!
