A break in neighboring cities' water main created a 20-foot hole and closed the city's busiest intersection for three weeks.

On the morning of June 22, the bottom of a 36-inch water main in the heart of Robbinsdale burst, peeling back several feet of concrete-coated steel pipe like a can of sardines.

Over the next 40 minutes, an estimated 600,000 gallons of water blasted downward, creating a hole 20 feet deep at the city's busiest intersection.

"This is your worst nightmare," said Crystal City Engineer Tom Mathisen, who supervised the repairs. "It's always kind of hair-pulling, but yet, because we do this kind of stuff all of the time, there's a process to do it."

The complete repair and reconstruction of the giant Robbinsdale Sinkhole was finished in three weeks, an impressive feat considering the magnitude and complexity of the damage. Water gushing from the broken water main bored down 10 feet and destroyed a sanitary sewer line, which filled with sand and dirt. Then water, dirt and debris churned upward, taking out a storm sewer pipe that sat less than a foot above the water main.

The water continued to drive toward the surface, and eventually popped off several manhole covers, flooding the intersection of 42nd Avenue (County Rd. 9) and Bottineau Boulevard (Hwy. 81) around 10 a.m. In a stroke of luck, a nearby gas line was unscathed and no one was injured.

"I certainly have to commend the [various public works departments] for how quickly they turned the water off ... and then repaired it," said Robbinsdale Mayor Regan Murphy. "It was an amazing response - I mean, it was a 20-foot hole, and they had [Hwy. 81] open in two weeks,"

The repairs were especially tricky because the water main takes two slight turns near the break, one at a 45-degree angle and one at a 12-degree angle. The bends had to be replaced with custom piping, which was trucked in overnight from Dayton, Ohio.

"Thirty-six-inch ductile iron pipe is not something you just keep on your shelf," said Mathisen.

There was speculation that the blowout was related to the severe weather that ripped through the Twin Cities June 21-22, but city officials say that the break was probably a result of a leak that slowly built for years. Mathison pointed out clusters of pinholes around the spot where the 50-year-old pipe burst as evidence of it weakening over time.

Four months after he built a new, two-story brick house in his village in northern China's Shandong Province, Xiao Guoqiang was alarmed to find a huge crack on the living room wall.

Having seen homes in neighboring villages sink, Xiao realized his long-held fears were coming true.

"I knew the day was coming, but I didn't expect it to happen so soon," said Xiao, who has been forced to move from the land -- on which four generations of his family have lived -- as a consequence.

Xiao's hometown, Jining, is one of China's "coal cities," whose mineral wealth helps light up the night skies of the world's most energy-hungry country. The land here is honeycombed with coal mines, which can form massive sinkholes that leave thousands of homes uninhabitable every year.

Albuquerque - Friday's heavy downpour created a mystery in an Albuquerque backyard. After a lot of rain fell in a short time, the earth opened up revealing a deep underground pit at the home of Alex Sanouvon.

"I've been here 25 years and I have never seen anything like that," said Sanouvon. "Then suddenly, I just hear this collapse and all of the water rushed down and I came to look at it, and there was that hole." Sanouvon said.

The hole is a little less than 10 feet deep and about 3 ½ feet wide. Cinder blocks show the hole was built by someone and a large pipe sits at the bottom.

Sanouvon said when he moved in to the house decades ago, the hole wasn't mentioned..

A water main break in Cherokee County caused a major sinkhole to form under East Cherokee Drive at Holly Springs Road early Thursday morning.

Cherokee County Sheriff spokesman Lt. Jay Baker said that the water main break was called in a little after 2 a.m., on Thursday morning. As deputies closed the road, the asphalt began to sink.

Then the road collapsed.

"Fortunately, we were getting calls about it when water was coming through the road," Baker said. "If it had just happened, it could have been deadly for somebody who drove into it."

The Cherokee County Water and Sewage Authority turned off water for about five houses in the area. Spokesman Dwight Turner said a 20-foot section of PVC pipe had split under East Cherokee Drive, causing water to leak out of the road.

"[The pipe] is probably 30 years old or older," he said. "We've been replacing PVC pipe with ductile iron pipe for many, many years and we will continue to. But we haven't gotten it all done yet. And that's just one of the things that happens."

Ductile iron pipes are thought to last for several decades, Turner said.

One moment Tina Sanchez was standing on the pavement, the next she was in it.

Sanchez had to be pulled out of a sinkhole Monday by East Joliet Firefighters when the ground gave way in the mobile home park where she lives at 1703 S. Chicago St.

About 6 p.m. Sanchez and her son were walking past a nearby home when she stopped to talk to a neighbor near a parking space and a steel drain, she said. Without warning, she fell into the ground and had to hold on to her son and try to brace her feet against the drain, she said.

"I was freaking out," Sanchez said. "The more I kept trying to get up, the more I kept falling in."

Another sinkhole has cropped up in the Lowcountry, according to the South Carolina Department of Transportation.

SCDOT spokesman Bob Kudelka said a washout closed Wire Road in Dorchester County on Monday. Wire Road is located about half a mile from the Orangeburg County line in Reevesville.

On-site SCDOT engineer David Pilch said the first warning of a sinkhole came Sunday night on a call by the South Carolina Highway Patrol.

Pilch says when his crews arrived in the morning, the sinkhole was five feet wide and several feet deep. Those measurements changed early in the afternoon when Kudelka reported the sinkhole grew to 10 feet deep and seven feet wide.

Monday morning both lanes of Wire Road were closed.

An Assumption Parish official says the deepest part of the 22-acre sinkhole near Bayou Corne is at least 500 feet deep, and not between 110 to 220 feet deep that has been estimated by Texas Brine.

John Boudreaux, director of the Assumption Parish Office of Homeland Security, said previous depth reports released by Texas Brine Co. may have been inaccurate because the company's sonar did not penetrate debris fields inside the sinkhole.

The swampland hole emerged last August after a Texas Brine salt dome cavern failed deep underground. That failure forced the evacuation of 350 residents for almost a year.

A jury in Florida has ruled that George Zimmerman is not guilty on all charges relating to the murder of unarmed African-American teenager Trayvon Martin. The high-profile case sparked a massive national debate on race and guns in the United States.

Twenty-nine-year-old Zimmerman was acquitted on Saturday of all charges relating to the fatal shooting of Martin. The former neighborhood watch volunteer could have been sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder or up to 30 years for manslaughter if he was found guilty.

Martin, 17, was shot over a year ago by Zimmerman, who claimed he acted in self-defense. The prosecution argued that Zimmerman was guilty of second-degree murder, stating that he racially profiled the unarmed teen and assumed he was a criminal when he saw him walking through a gated community in Sanford. They claimed that Zimmerman tracked the boy down and started the fight that led to the shooting.

The verdict was reached by a panel of six women jurors, 15 months after Martin's death and six miles away from where the incident took place.

Emergency crews were on the scene Friday in northern Indiana looking for a boy who fell into a hole in the sand near the Lake Michigan shoreline near Mount Baldy in Michigan City.

Officers at the Michigan City Police Department and the LaPorte County Sheriff's Office confirm to The Associated Press that an 8-year-old boy fell into a hole about 8 feet deep about 4:30 p.m. central time.

Michigan City police, fire and Department of Natural Resources used heavy equipment to find the child. WSBT reports the boy's family was moved from the scene to the beach around 6 p.m.

The boy was pulled from the sinkhole. No word in his condition.

As we gain ground on record rainfall totals, some businesses are losing ground in Weaverville. George Bielick of Asheville has seen enough.