Sinkholes
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Bizarro Earth

Incredible Images Show Giant Sinkhole In Sweden Keeps Expanding!

It looks like something taken straight from a horror movie. An enormous hole leading to hell, some would say. But this is not a movie.

This is a real and dangerous phenomenon. New shocking images clearly show the enormous pit in Sweden is expanding.

The 200 foot wide open pit is called the "Fabiangropen" (Fabian pit) and is in the Malmberget area is located at Gällivare, 75km from Kiruna, Sweden.

As you can see on the map, it is in the northern regions of Sweden.

Map hole Sweden

Comment: Sinkholes - A Sign of the Times?


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Giant Sinkhole Opens Up on Major Saskatoon Road

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© unknownSaskatoon sinkhole
Canada - A sinkhole large enough to drive a car into opened up on a major Saskatchewan road causing traffic chaos.

The three-metre wide chunk of road opened up on Idylwyld Drive north of 39th Street just before 9 a.m. Monday forcing thousands of motorists to take several detours.

It was caused by a break in a 20-centimetre pipe under the road causing water to swirl beneath the asphalt and led to the sinkhole.

"They are totally unpredictable," said public works manager Pat Hyde to the Saskatoon Star Phoenix. "This could have been happening for days or weeks."

The city received no reports of vehicles falling into the hole, but one commenter on Yahoo! Canada News joked, "I lost my car in there. It's on top of the Jeep, and under the BMW."

Holes are created because freezing and thawing cycles put pressure along underground pipes causing them to become weak and break. Snow melts forcing moisture into the cracks of roads and when it freezes it expands and makes the small cracks into bigger holes. The warmer winter across much of Canada is resulting in potholes being spotted earlier than normal.

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Update: Philippines: Public Warned: Don't Go Near Sinkhole Site

sinkhole
© Aldo Nelbert BanyanalResidents of Barangay Cambuang, Dumanjug gather near a sinkhole in a farm few meters from the national road. They said the sinkhole is growing and has already swallowed an electric post and a small mango tree.
People should stay away from the new sinkhole in a farm in Dumanjug town because the soil may "cave in" anytime.

Geologist Maria Elena Lupo gave this warning yesterday as curious onlookers gathered at the site in barangay Cambuang.

"There's no way of knowing how big it will grow and when it will stop. It could suddenly collapse into an unexpected gap," said Lupo, senior geologist of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Mines and Geosciences Bureau in Central Visayas (DENR-MGB-7).

When Cebu Daily News visited the area yesterday, the ground continued to move.

Lupo, however, said the agency lacks the equipment to check the extent of "cavities" formed underground.

She said these empty gaps on the subsurfaceof the land are often found in volcanic or limestone areas.

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Philippines: Sinkhole Stirs Village Still Nervous on Quake

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© Aldo Nelbert BanyanalResidents of Barangay Cambuang, Dumanjug gather near a sinkhole in a farm few meters from the national road. They said the sinkhole is growing and has already swallowed an electric post and a small mango tree.
Residents of a village here expressed alarm over a sinkhole that formed after an explosion, reviving tension in a community that is still nervous following an intensity 6.9 earthquake recently.

The hole was first discovered by a farm caretaker in Barangay Cambuang on Friday. It was initially the size of a frying pan, said Walter Pesablon, 36, who was watching over a 3-hectare farm in the village.

Pesablon said he didn't pay much attention to the hole at first, but when he returned to look at it after having breakfast, he noticed the soil moving and cracks forming around the hole.

An hour later, an explosion shattered the early morning silence of the village.

Pesablon said he checked again and saw a hole with a diameter of about 10 meters. By noon, it grew to 12 meters, the farm caretaker said. The next day, the hole had grown to about 20 meters in diameter and it appeared to be further increasing in size.

Bizarro Earth

Russia: Giant Sinkhole in Dagestan

Sinkhole near the village of Gurbuki Karabudakhkent in Dagestan. Scientist are trying to find out what caused this giant sinkhole.

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Russian city livid after toddler lost in urban sinkhole

Russia sinkhole
© RIA Novosti/Nikolay PahomovMother and her child fall in hole in Bryansk.
A normal weekend stroll with her one-and-a-half year-old son turned tragic for a young mother in the western Russian city of Bryansk, when the ground opened up under her feet.

­Tatyana Didenko, 26, and her only son Kirill fell into a sinkhole on a busy street in Bryansk Sunday. The woman was saved by her husband Vladimir Didenko, a traffic police officer - someone called him shortly following the accident, and he was not far from the scene, Komsomolskaya Pravda reports. "He pulled his wife out, she caught the edge of the ditch and held on," witnesses told the newspaper. "But he couldn't manage to save the child," they added.

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Pennsylvania, US: Giant sinkhole opens in Homewood

A collapsed sewer line caused a giant sinkhole to open up in Homewood on Thursday morning.

Officials from Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority said a 20-inch sewer line collapsed and caused the sinkhole on Brushton Avenue just before 3 a.m.

Loretta Cousin said the situation could have been a lot more dangerous.

"Someone could have easily driven through there," Cousin said. "That ground just sunk, and cars can't go over it."

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Pennsylvania, US: Massive sinkhole prompts evacuations, need to move dozens of graves and relocate families


A broken water main may be to blame for creating a sinkhole that has put a dozen nearby homes and scores of grave sites in peril.

The reports of the sinkhole began coming in around 9 a.m. Thursday from the 300 block of N. 10th St. in Allentown.

Officials evacuated at least 15 homes in the area. The fate of those homes has yet to be determined.

Inspectors spent the afternoon evaluating their structural integrity, but won't know what's up until the size of the sinkhole is calculated.

Several of the homes have shifted because of the sinkhole, leaving cracks inside, said fire officials.

Many of the evacuees will spend the night elsewhere, worrying about what could happen.

"Three of the homes have major shifting issues that you can physically see. You can see the doors don't open, cracks in the walls and in the foundations," said Asst. Chief, Lee Laubach, Allentown Fire Dept. "So, those are the three no-go homes right now."

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US: Sinkholes swallow more cars! This time TWO cars are swallowed at an intersection in Polk City, Florida

Gigi Wilkins spent the week watching special effects at Disney World, but on Thursday she saw something much more earth shattering.

Literally.

Her vehicle was swallowed by a sinkhole Thursday morning at a rest stop off of Interstate 4 westbound near mile marker 46. Wilkins' 2008 white Ford Escape fell into the hole and her husband's Hyundai Santa Fe was on the verge of falling into the hole located in the rear parking lot of the rest area.

The North Port couple was driving home from Orlando after spending a week
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© Ernst Peters/The LedgerDOT officials stand next to a 30 ft wide sinkhole that opened in a rest area on the west bound side of I-4 west of Old Grade Rd., near Polk City, Florida, Wednesday. Two vehicles including a Ford Escape were tempoararily stuck in the hole.
vacationing with family and seeing shows at Disney World. They were parked alongside each other with one parking space between the vehicles.

Wilkins, 53, said she heard a cracking sound as she walked out of the bathroom toward her vehicle around 10:30 a.m. Thursday. She said she started trembling as she watched the ground around her vehicle sink in.

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US: Another sinkhole swallows another car, this time in Texas


Customers in a Lower Valley neighborhood have running water again after broken pipe shut off service this morning. That water main break created a giant sink hole, that was big enough to swallow part of a police car.

Neighbors near the intersection of Rusk and Pecos woke up to quite the mess this morning. El Paso Water Utility crews spent the morning pouring dirt into the large sink hole that opened up during this morning's water main break. They had to shut off water to about 40 neighbors to fix it.

"That's really been hard," said April Gerome, who lives nearby. "There's been a lot of racket out here where they've been pumping water because the mud was up to the curb. You couldn't get in or out. It's really been something!"

Gerome woke up around 2:15 this morning to a strange sound coming from her front yard.
"I heard what sounded like water rushing," she said. She opened her front door and couldn't believe what she was seeing.

"To my shock there was just a river of water running though the front yard," she said.