Large sinkhole swallows bus & car in Indian Chennai

Major sinkhole swallows vehicles at campsite near Queensland’s Rainbow Beach, Australia

PHOTO: A major sinkhole has swallowed vehicles at Inskip Point in Queensland. (Facebook: Kieren Hudson)

A major sinkhole has swallowed vehicles at a popular camping spot near Queensland’s Rainbow Beach overnight.

 

The sinkhole, bigger than a football field and several metres deep, developed at Inskip Point around midnight.

 

A car, caravan, a camper trailer and tents were swallowed almost immediately.

 

Queensland Parks and Wildlife Services (QPWS) said 150-metre sinkhole is three metres deep and takes up a large part of the MV Beagle campsite.

 

Holiday-maker Casey Hughes told ABC the sinkhole “sounded like a thunder noise” as it opened up.

 

Fellow camper Sylvia Murray said “it was amazing to see”.

 

“People were basically on the edge of it with their van, trying to madly get their vans out,” she said.

PHOTO: Vehicles, including a caravan, have been swallowed by a giant sinkhole at a beachside campsite on Queensland’s coast overnight. (ABC News: Leonie Mellor)

One woman ran screaming through nearby campsites banging on caravans and yelling for people to get out.

 

QPWS said 140 people had been evacuated from the site.

 

Police and SES crews were quickly on site, helping those in the immediate vicinity to leave.

 

Gympie Mayor Mick Curran said the sinkhole near Fraser Island did not pose a threat to holiday-makers.

 

“Certainly being the school holidays at the moment there’s quite a number of campers at Inskip,” he said.

 

“Thankfully at this stage, everyone has been accounted for and there’s been no reported injuries.”

 

Senior ranger Dan Clifton said there is a possibility the sinkhole could get bigger.

 

“There is a real possibility the hole could expand with ocean currents, so people are urged to avoid the area,” Mr Clifton said.

 

“Rangers and police have erected traffic barriers and warnings signs to advise beachgoers of potential risks.

Courtesy of abc.net.au

http://tinyurl.com/qfag34v

Enormous sinkhole opens up forcing more than 380 people to evacuate in Naples, Italy

Residents in Naples, Italy woke up this morning to a massive sinkhole that opened up in the middle of a street.

 

Officials say the sinkhole started off as a depression in the road and is most likely caused by a broken sewer. 

 

‘It was 5 this morning when I heard a huge thud. I looked out and saw the road collapse and swallow a car,’ a woman who lives in a neighboring apartment told Il Mattino.

 

None of the surrounding buildings showed sign of damage, but nonetheless the four condominiums surrounding the crater were evacuated on Sunday with city officials scrambling to find accommodations for the 380 displaced locals. 

 

‘We are in contact with hotel facilities in the area in order to accommodate everyone and try to reduce as far as possible, the inconvenience to citizens,’ an official said. 

 

David Lezzi, the operations manager of the site, said crews will first figure out the extent of the hole before trying to stabilize it with concrete.

 

Reports did not say when residents might be able to return to their homes.  The area has been cordoned off.

Next steps: Engineers plan to stabilize the sinkhole by filling it with concrete. It’s unclear when the evacuated families will be able to return to their homes

Courtesy of The Daily Mail 

http://tinyurl.com/q284jgb

A large sinkhole has swallowed up an entire section of a street near downtown Omaha, Nebraska, USA

A large sinkhole swallowed up an entire section of a street near downtown Omaha this week.

 

The sinkhole, which consumed the width of the two-lane street, was reported New Year’s Day near 20th and Pierce streets.

 

Lesley Mosley, a resident in the area, told Omaha television station KETV that she heard a loud noise and thought it was a car accident.

 

The sinkhole is about 25 feet in diameter and about 15 deep, officials said. No injuries or property damage was reported.

 

“This cave-in is on a much bigger scale than we usually see,” Craig Christians, manager of Omaha’s sewer maintenance division, told the Omaha World-Herald.

 

The city had blocked off that section of the street on Christmas Day after someone noticed the street sagging, Christians said. Maintenance workers discovered that a century-old brick manhole had collapsed, allowing water to wash out the soil underneath the street.

 

“The pavement, under its own weight and (with) no support under it, collapsed,” Christians told the newspaper.

 

Christians said it could take months to repair the street.

 

It’s at least the third large sinkhole in the area since mid-June. On June 22, one at 22nd Street and Saint Mary’s Avenue swallowed a woman’s car, who suffered minor injuries. In September, another sinkhole opened up nearby at 20th and Farnam streets because of a water main break. No injuries were reported from that incident.

Courtesy of Daily Journal

http://tinyurl.com/k75bnkg

Giant sinkhole opens up in County Durham, UK

A sinkhole was discovered on Thursday 21 August 2014 at Cowshill in the Weardale District of County Durham, northeast England. At the time the hole was about 5 meters across, but it has been growing ever since, and by Monday 25 August had reached about 35 meters wide, raising fears it may threaten the home of the landowners on whose property it opened up.

 

Sinkholes are generally caused by water eroding soft limestone or unconsolidated deposits from beneath, causing a hole that works its way upwards and eventually opening spectacularly at the surface. Where there are unconsolidated deposits at the surface they can infill from the sides, apparently swallowing objects at the surface, including people, without trace.

 

On this occasion the sinkhole has been linked to former lead-mining works beneath the hillside, which have apparently begun to collapse following a period of extremely wet weather.

The approximate location of the Cowshill Sinkhole

http://tinyurl.com/od94nhg

Massive sinkholes are appearing in Russia. How did they get there?

Three large sinkholes have suddenly surprised the country of Russia the past few weeks and their appearances have surprised many experts. The first sinkhole was found a few weeks back in the Yamal Peninsula in northern Russia, near the arctic circle. The size of it was pretty large, at 160 feet around and 230 feet deep, about the size of half a soccer field. The second sinkhole was much smaller but found only 18 miles away from the first one.

The third one was just discovered and is the smallest of the three. But how did these sinkholes appear? How did they get there? Some experts now believe they have the answer.

This area is a large producer of natural gas, but no one believes that the production companies have caused them, they think it was all mother nature herself.

This region of the globe was covered by a large sea over 10,000 years ago. When the sea dried up the salt, water, sand and gas all froze in the soil under ground. But since the earth is warming at an alarming rate, it is melting all the elements and creating pressure. This pressure is great enough to act like champagne in a bottle and eventually the top blew right off.

More sinkholes could appear in the coming days, but no one really knows. It all depends on if the earth has released enough pressure with the three sinkholes already found.

http://tinyurl.com/k5qt23l

40-foot wide sinkhole swallows part of college football field, USA

A large sinkhole has been discovered at Austin Peay State University’s Governors Stadium, complicating the project underway already to replace the main stadium building.

 

The hole, which extends into the north endzone, started out only about 3 feet by 5 feet and no more than 5 feet deep when it was discovered where the football field meets the track.

 

But workers have had to dig it out to be much larger, about 40 feet wide and 40 feet deep, in search of stable bedrock.

 

“We actually put a line item in the budget for sinkhole remediation,” said Mike Jenkins, superintendent for Nashville-based Bell & Associates Construction. “You never know to what extent you’re going to run into them, but we know that Montgomery County, and Austin Peay State University specifically, is famous for sinkholes.”

 

Last August, a 5-foot sinkhole opened on Ford Street, near the university’s Maynard Mathematics Center.

 

Underground limestone caves create the area’s unique karst topography, and digging for installation of electrical wires or pipes can accelerate the flow of water that leads to the erosion of the rock.

Jenkins said officials met with a geotechnical engineer Monday as construction workers continued to excavate dirt and expand the hole, which was discovered nearly a month ago. It will be filled by several layers of rock, separated by concrete and topped off by 2 feet of subgrade asphalt beneath the track and turf.

 

That should be completed by the end of the week, and Jenkins said they delayed the process in order to have it coincide with the scheduled demolition of the existing track and turf. New surfaces will be laid sometime in June.

 

Renovations to the stands on the west side are being treated as a separate project, and Jenkins said the sinkhole shouldn’t affect the budget or schedule for either one.

 

Crews will also have to fix multiple smaller sinkholes in the parking lot in the final part of the project, which should be finished in time for the Govs’ home opener vs. Chattanooga Sept. 13.

http://tinyurl.com/o3dazjb

60 Meter-Long Sinkhole In Sichuan Province Buries 12 Buildings, China

http://shanghaiist.com/2013/12/13/sinkhole-sichuan-province.php

100 Sinkholes Found In Bohol After Quake, Philippines

Close to 100 sinkholes have been discovered in nine towns and one city in Bohol after the 7.2-magnitude earthquake that shook the province on Oct. 15.

Environment officials said not all of the sinkholes posed dangers to the public as long as no houses were built over them.

In Poblacion Uno village in the capital Tagbilaran City, however, 200 families were asked to leave their homes, as the structures were built on the roof of a sinkhole.

A sinkhole is a vacuum or cavern beneath the ground or topsoil waiting for an occurrence (earthquake or heavy rain) to rupture.

Bohol Gov. Edgar Chatto said a team from the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) was assessing the sinkholes to determine which ones posed a threat to the public.

The eight-member team is using a ground-penetrating radar to map the island for sinkholes.

Chatto said the mapping would be completed by the first quarter of 2014 and then the team would decide whether there was need for engineering intervention.

“Don’t worry. Bohol is a very safe place to stay,” Chatto told reporters on Friday.

“Makinig tayo sa mga scientists and experts (Let us listen to the scientists and experts).”

The sinkholes were found by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in Central Visayas (DENR-7) in: Tagbilaran City and the towns of Baclayon, Corella, Alburquerque, Panglao, Dauis, Balilihan, Batuan, Loon and Carmen.

Ed Llamedo, DENR-7 information officer, said these sinkholes had been existing as long as 5.3 million years ago but only surfaced after the strong earthquake on Oct. 15 that killed more than 200 persons and destroyed or damaged P5 billion worth of infrastructure, churches, and public and private structures.

Llamedo urged local officials to implement force evacuation, monitor the sinkholes, put up road signs for sinkholes and cordon off exposed sinkholes.

Filling the sinkholes with cement will only be advisable after the MGB team gets a complete picture of the sinkhole below, he added.

Llamedo explained that their radar can produce an image indicating the diameter, depth, cave pillar and extent of the sinkholes.

The DENR issued a Geohazard Threat Advisory on Oct. 28, recommending the preemptive evacuation of 200 families whose houses were built on the cave roof of the sinkhole found in Poblacion Uno in Tagbilaran City. The sinkhole already ate up an interior road.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/519051/100-sinkholes-found-in-bohol-after-quake