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South Carolina, US: Sinkhole Closes Stephens County Boat Ramp

There is no timeline yet to re-open a Stephens County boat ramp on Lake Hartwell.

The gate to the boat ramp just off of U.S. 123 at the South Carolina state line is locked and the sign posted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers states that the area is closed due to a sinkhole.

The Corps of Engineers Hartwell Project operations manager Kenneth Bedenbaugh said that the Corps discovered the sinkhole at the start of the Fourth of July weekend.

"Late Friday evening, July 1, we discovered a sinkhole that had developed on an access road leading into the recreation area, which created a public safety hazard for anybody to be driving on that road," said Bedenbaugh. "Due to that, we immediately closed the park and it remained closed throughout the weekend."

According to Bedenbaugh, the area will remain closed until repairs take place.

Bizarro Earth

U.S.: Fairfield Township deals with sinkhole

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© Scripps Media, Inc.
Fairfield, Ohio - Butler County Road Engineers are trying to deal with a sinkhole that has formed at the intersection of Hamilton-Mason Road and Morris Road in Fairfield Township.

They say a water main break has caused the sinkhole sometime early Saturday. They've placed road closure signs and barricades at the intersection to turn motorists away. Engineers say the intersection will be closed until repairs are made sometime in the next week.

The fire department says the sinkhole has taken a fire hydrant out of service and the hole will have an impact on safety services and convenience to residents in the area.

It's recommended that if you drive through the area that you seek an alternate route.

Bizarro Earth

US: St. Clair Crack Remains a Mystery

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© WKYC-TV
Cleveland -- It's about 2 inches wide and just as deep, stretching from Ontario to East Sixth Street and running the length of the new Medical Mart construction.

Fear of the unknown may run much deeper.

The point man for Medical Mart construction, Jeff Appelbaum, says he can't say yet what the cause of the crack is or what the contributing factors are.

Appelbaum isn't passing on or shouldering the blame, but the construction team is investigating the cause.

Appelbaum says the excavation is supported by a massive dirt mound and earth anchors on the north side of St. Clair Avenue.

Still, the street split this seam.

Binoculars

Australia: Enormous sinkhole swallows south-east Queensland Rainbow beach

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A sinkhole up to 100m long and 50m deep has opened up on a south-east Queensland beach.

The hole appeared at Inskip Point, Rainbow Beach, on Saturday night and continued to grow yesterday. It is estimated to be up to 50m deep.

Hervey Bay man Ron Morgan told the Fraser Coast Chronicle he could only watch in shock as a small hole turned into a gaping chasm 30 metres wide and kept on growing.

Bizarro Earth

Canada: Downpour Leaves 18-metre Sinkhole in Ontario Highway

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© Mike Carroccetto / The Ottawa CitizenThis sinkhole is located on Hwy. 148 between Luskville and Quyon near Ch. Parker. A detour is in place.
A section of Highway 148 near Luskville, Ontario, is now a canyon 18 metres deep, a victim of Friday's heavy rains.

Remarkably, the family living next to the giant gap owns a construction company with expertise in exactly the type of work that will be needed to fix the road.

Not only does James Nugent, of R.H. Nugent Construction, have 35 years of experience in the field, he has the heavy machinery parked only a few hundred meters from the caved-in road.

"We were called in right off the bat," he said. "There's nothing signed, but we probably will be proceeding with the work under an emergency situation. They want a company that can start right away."

Nugent said the large pipe that ran under that stretch of the highway seems to have been blocked at the intake. The torrents of water late last week stressed the situation causing the pipe to buckle and the ground above the pipe became waterlogged and gave way.

Bizarro Earth

Australia - Sink Hole Sucks Away Trees at Inskip Point

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© Glenn Barnes / The Courier-Mail Big Bite: Inskip Peninsula campers cautiously check out the sink hole.
Now you see it, now you don't. That was the case at Inskip beach, north of Tin Can Bay, yesterday as a 100m-wide section of beach was swallowed by a sink hole.

The hole opened up on the popular stretch of beach about 10.30am and by mid-afternoon it looked like a giant bite had been taken out of the coastline.

Campers on Inskip Peninsula watched in awe as chunks of sand were sucked out to sea, followed by trees and signs.
Visitor Rhonda Harris said it was a "phenomenon''.

"When we first came up about 11am the water was actually bubbling like it was boiling,'' she said.

"We saw the 'no camping' sign get washed out.''

Camper Shane Hillhouse said four-wheel drives had been travelling along the popular stretch of sand, near Inskip Peninsula, shortly before the hole appeared.

Newspaper

US: Two Killed After Driving into Massive Hole in Flooded Road

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© UnknownReference Image, not actual.
Two South Dakota motorists died on Tuesday after they drove separately into a massive hole in a roadway washed out by heavy rains, and both vehicles were swept downstream by rushing water, police said.

Heavy rains opened a section of road 10 miles north of Reliance, South Dakota, about 60 feet wide and 50 feet deep that was obscured partly by an uphill grade, said Lieutenant Alan Welsh of the South Dakota Highway Patrol.

The vehicles plunged into the crevice and down into a normally dry creek bed that had been swollen by up to 6 inches of rain, Welsh said. The creek bed flows toward the Missouri River east of where the crashes occurred.

Both of the motorists were from nearby towns. Police identified them as a 56-year-old Chamberlain woman who was found in her vehicle about 100 yards from the crash site and a 61-year-old Lower Brule woman found four miles downstream.

State transportation officials have closed the road.

Alarm Clock

India - Cracks in Uttar Pradesh plains need monitoring, warns scientist

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© Unknown
Long widespread cracks observed in several places in the Indo-Gangetic plains could be due to motion of a massive granitic body underneath, an Indian scientist in the United States has cautioned.

"It is my sincere appeal to the government of India to monitor seismic activities in the area before any major disaster takes place," Ramesh Singh, who had extensively studied the seismology in that region, said in a statement as concern mounted over cracks being formed in several districts of Uttar Pradesh.

"If the orientations of such long cracks are in the east-west direction, then the cracks could be due to stress on the surface of the earth due to motion of this massive craton (granitic body) which is exposed near Jhansi," Singh said.

Singh, who was a senior professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT-K), is now professor at George Mason University in Washington and vice chair of GeoRisk Commission of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics.

He said this massive body underlying the region is inclined towards northeast with depth reaching 300-500 m near Kanpur and 1,200 m in Lucknow. He said he and his colleagues at IIT-K had studied the configuration of this craton in 1990 using magnetotelluric method.

Stop

North Dakota, US: Sinkhole closes Fargo overpass

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© Dave Wallis / The ForumThe Seventh Avenue North bridge over Interstate 29 in Fargo was closed to traffic after the asphalt road surface caved in because of a sinkhole that opened up Sunday
A bridge over Interstate 29 in north Fargo, slated to be replaced next year, is still sound after a sinkhole was discovered this past weekend near its base, officials say.

Traffic is being detoured away from the Seventh Avenue North overpass because of the sinkhole, which measures about 2 feet deep and 3 feet wide, said Lee Anderson, Fargo Public Works maintenance supervisor.

Jamie Olson with the North Dakota Department of Transportation said Monday that engineers found the sinkhole caused no problems for the 45-year-old bridge.

"There are no issues with the structure of the bridge," Olson said.

NDDOT plans to fully reconstruct the two-lane overpass in 2012, widening it to include an enclosed pedestrian walkway.

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US: 45' deep sinkhole appears in Pittsburgh parking lot

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© Anon.
The manager for Norwin Hills Shopping Center expects that parking lot damage from recent storms should be repaired by this weekend.

Late Saturday night, 30 feet below the parking lot, a storm drain broke, causing the asphalt and soil to crumble, and form a sinkhole 25 feet in diameter.

The storm water system then clogged, flooding Barnes Lake Road.

"We wanted to see that Barnes Lake Road was open for traffic," said Mike Turley, North Huntingdon Township interim manager. "But the shopping center is private property."

North Huntingdon and Westmoreland County officials worked through Sunday and Monday to pump water off of Barnes Lake Road, while the shopping center has hired a company to fix the sinkhole.

"It was just an anomaly," said Philip Schneider, the Lamar Co. asset manager for the shopping center.