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Sinkholes damage county, city roads in Hanford, California

Mike Eiman
Hanford Sentinel
Fri, 17 Jun 2016 00:30 UTC
Hanford sinkhole
© Mike Eiman/The Sentinel
Officials are asking drivers to stay vigilant as sinkholes start to take a toll on Kings County roads.

County road crews closed a section of Houston Avenue southeast of Hanford after a massive sinkhole opened Sunday night.

Kings County Roads Superintendent Tony Gomes said motorists discovered the sinkhole in the eastbound lane of Houston Avenue, just east of Sixth Avenue, around 9:30 p.m. County roads employees were called shortly after and found a hole that encompassed the entire lane.

Gomes said a big rig reportedly made it through the area unscathed Sunday night. One car got a flat tire, while a second car got three flat tires.

By Monday morning, the hole had grown to three or four times its original size. Gomes said both lanes of Houston Avenue will remain closed between Second and Sixth avenues until further notice. Motorists are being asked to use Highway 198 to bypass the affected area.

"I have never encountered this in 42 years," Gomes said. "We've had squirrel holes and gopher holes that have taken water from the high side of the road and caused erosion until finally the road will dimple down. But only a dimple, not a huge cavity."


Comment: Sinkholes: The groundbreaking truth

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Sinkhole swallows pond at Kentucky golf course

Monique Blair
WKYT
Mon, 20 Jun 2016 22:24 UTC
Golf course sinkhole
© WKYT
Golfers and employees who were at the Old Bridge Golf Course Saturday were in for a surprise.

"It's about three and a half feet wide and about 20 feet deep," Course Superintendent Cody Pollard said.

Pollard says on Saturday, a sinkhole opened under a pond that surrounds the first hole on the course, swallowing most of the pond water.

"My brother called me and said, 'you should look at this'. The pond has literally sunk and there is no water left in it," Pollard explained.

"I came out here and looked at it and there was a geyser throwing water about 15 feet up," Pollard said.

The sinkhole is not affecting the actual course, so golfers can continue to play.

"Everyone thinks it's the highlight of the golf course and now it's gone within a matter of minutes," Pollard said.
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Two giant sinkholes at risk of colliding in Texas claim researchers

Leeanna McLean
The Weather Network
Fri, 17 Jun 2016 14:22 UTC
sinkholes in Wink, Texas
© Google Maps The Wink sinkholes are about one mile apart.
Just days after a massive sinkhole opened up in the Ottawa downtown core, scientists are now warning that two giant and rapidly expanding sinkholes in Texas are at risk of collapsing into each other.

They are about 2 km apart and sit between the cities of Wink and Kermit in the West Texas oil patch. A population of nearly 7,000 people live in the area.

Satellite radar imagery shows the sinkholes are growing and new ones are forming at an "alarming rate" as nearby subsidence occurs, according to a study recently published in the scientific journal Remote Sensing.

Geophysicists at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas say the area surrounding the two massive sinkholes is unstable, which could lead to the development of one giant sinkhole.

"This area is heavily populated with oil and gas production equipment and installations, hazardous liquid pipelines, as well as two communities. The intrusion of freshwater to underground can dissolve the interbedded salt layers and accelerate the sinkhole collapse," said Jim-Woo Kim, who leads the SMU geophysical team reporting the findings. "A collapse could be catastrophic. Following our study, we are collecting more high-resolution satellite data over the sinkholes and neighboring regions to monitor further development and collapse."
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Sinkhole swallows 3 cars in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Hean Socheata
All Expatt News
Wed, 08 Jun 2016 13:50 UTC
Onlookers watch the cars sink in a hole by a construction site by Phnom Penh's Olympic Stadium after a heavy rain on Wednesday, June 8, 2016.
Onlookers watch the cars sink in a hole by a construction site by Phnom Penh's Olympic Stadium after a heavy rain on Wednesday, June 8, 2016.
The onset of monsoon rains in Phnom Penh this week opened a sinkhole on a busy road close to the iconic Olympic Stadium.

The city is thought to be at high risk of sinkholes due to its position astride numerous lakes, which the government has filled in over the years to expand the land on which it can build.

Residents living close to a large skyscraper project next to the sinkhole have become concerned.

Hout Hang, 60, who saw the road collapse during a rainstorm on Wednesday, said he had watched in amazement as the tarmac gave way.

"It just suddenly happened, and three cars fell into the sinkhole," he said. "Luckily the cars were just parked there, otherwise, if people were driving, it would be dangerous and could have killed people," he said.

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Hardhat

Large sinkhole swallows road in Mason City, Iowa

Brian Tabick
KIMT
Sat, 11 Jun 2016 20:42 UTC
Iowa sinkhole
© KIMT
Authorities say they responded to a call of a sink hole around midnight on B20 near Poplar and Raven Road just North of Mason City.

Those who live near the sinkhole say they have been working on fixing the damage left behind for most of the morning.

"It washed out our waterline for horses, and I have been working on that all day," says Steve Smith. "But the road is the least of our worries. It washed out our crops, we had some hail north of here, the roads the minor compared to what we've dealt with."

Deputy Brian Koob with the Cerro Gordo County Sheriff's Office says many road ways are blocked with water and folks need to try and avoid areas that completely covered.

"It is something that just pops up," says Deputy Koob. "We ask the driver to be vigilant, when we have heavy downpours and flash flooding this could happen to any roadway. It's hard to detect when the colvert is going to giveway unless you see the bowing in the road or anything of that affect."

As for Smith, he says this isn't the first time he has seen a sinkhole and it certainly wont be the last.

"I've seen it numerous times, when you get 4 inches in 15- 20 minutes it's going to happen," he says.

Comment: Sinkholes: The groundbreaking truth

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Garbage truck falls into sinkhole in Austin, Texas

Jane Webster
Austin American-Stateman
Fri, 10 Jun 2016 11:38 UTC
Austin sinkhole
© Rodolfo Gonzalez/Austin American-Statesman
A sinkhole swallowed the front end of a garbage truck in North Austin on Friday.

The truck's driver was fine — he found another truck and finished his route, a city official said — but Austin Water had to turn off the water in the immediate area for several hours while crews extracted the truck.

The cause was a 12-inch water main break, said Jill Mayfield, a spokeswoman for Austin Water.

"When water mains break, they run underneath the ground for a while, and then they're going to find the path of least resistance," she said.

The water from this break had flowed under the road and undercut its foundation, Mayfield said, weakening it enough for the heavy truck to break through.

A full block of West 49th Street was shut down between Woodview Avenue and Shoal Creek Boulevard on Friday morning while more than a dozen people worked to pull the truck out of the hole.

Workers hooked the truck to a tow vehicle, but then they had to get steel plates to make the ground safe enough for towing.
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New info on 'crater-hole' in Siberia: 'Explosion' and 'glow in sky' witnessed 100 km away


The Siberian Times
Tue, 07 Jun 2016 05:35 UTC
Siberian crater hole
© Vladimir EpifanovSince the crater was formed in a 2013 blowout, the crater's size rapidly increased at least 15 times during the next year and a half.

Startling new details emerge of the most mysterious of Siberia's newly created giant permafrost holes.

First accounts of the gaping fissure in the earth - found by reindeer herders, who were almost swallowed up by the crater - reported that it was around 4 metres in width and 'about 100 metres' deep.

Scattered over a radius of one kilometre were lumps of displaced soil, sand and ice which had erupted from the earth.

Now we can reveal significant new details about this remote crater on the Taimyr peninsula in Krasnoyarsk region, some 440 kilometres from dozens of other newly-formed giant holes.

Firstly, respected scientist Dr Vladimir Epifanov, the sole leading expert to so far visit the site, said: 'There is verbal information that residents of nearby villages - at a distance of 70-100 km - heard a sound like an explosion, and one of them watched a clear glow in the sky. It was about one month after the Chelyabinsk meteorite.'

Locals wrongly suspected it was another exploding space object falling from the sky, it is believed. This is the first known account of the explosive sound, and a bright light in the sky for which - as yet - there seems no explanation.

Comment: The changes to the climate and earth are right on schedule and have little to do with human causation. This phase is the relatively short precursor to an ice age. We live in the last gasps of temperate climate, indicated by the uptick in weather disasters occurring all over the world, the ramifications of the electric universe affecting our entire solar system.

The process of degassing is a normal phenomenon in permafrost regions containing quantities of methane. A lightning strike connecting with a spouting methane vent might prove to be interesting!

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Massive sinkhole shuts down street in downtown Ottawa


CBC News
Wed, 08 Jun 2016 11:44 UTC
Ottawa Sinkhole
© Jean Delisle/CBCA massive sinkhole has spread across Rideau Street in downtown Ottawa.
Mall evacuated, power out in area, police ask residents to avoid scene of the collapse

A massive sinkhole has formed next to a shopping mall in downtown Ottawa, causing a gas leak and forcing the evacuation of all nearby businesses.

The sinkhole formed near the corner of Rideau Street and Sussex Drive, not far east of the Chateau Laurier hotel. Soon after forming, it spread across the entirety of Rideau Street, from sidewalk to sidewalk.

A large volume of water could be seen gushing inside, but the water has since been shut off.



Comment: A list of of recent sinkhole activity can be found here.

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Five-metre-wide sinkhole appears outside primary school in Nanning, China


South China Morning Post
Mon, 06 Jun 2016 17:38 UTC
Nanning sinkhole
© South China Morning Post
A five-metre-wide sinkhole has appeared outside the gate of a primary school in southwestern China, mainland media report.

Luckily no one was injured because the ground collapsed at 8am on Sunday when Xiuling Primary

School in the city of Nanning, in Guangxi province, was closed, the China News Service reported.

Police quickly arrived at the scene of the sinkhole to block off the pavement and road near the school's entrance.
Nanning sinkhole
© South China Morning Post
An initial investigation found the sinkhole was caused by heavy rainfall over a number of days, which had led to the flooding of an underground basement, the report said.

Road collapses often occur in mainland cities during rainy days because of the poor quality of the infrastructure projects, experts said.

Comment: See also:

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Hardhat

Large sinkhole develops overnight in Austin, Texas neighborhood

James Barragan
Austin American-Statesman
Sat, 04 Jun 2016 10:40 UTC
Austin sinkhole
© Rodolfo Gonzalez / American-Statesman
Residents of Sierra Blanca Street in Northwest Austin woke up to sinkhole on their road that developed overnight as rain pounded the city.

Around 9 p.m., Austin police reported that a sinkhole had formed on the 10800 block of Sierra Blanca and said the road would be shut down for days until it could be repaired. Authorities aren't sure whether the hole was caused by the rain, but noted that the street where it formed was hit with heavy rainfall.

"The street is closed to motor vehicle traffic right now," Carolyn Perez, the public affairs manager for the city's public works department, said Saturday morning. "We're asking people not to move the barricade. ... We're asking for the public's consideration."

Perez said she estimated the whole was 6 feet deep and 6 feet wide.

"It's a sizable hole," she said. "We would not want someone to drive there and not realize it's there. It's at the bottom of a slight hill and you won't see it until you're right up on it, especially at night."

Perez said the Public Works Department was working with police to keep people off the street. She said a fence would be put up around the hole. An engineer from the department will inspect the hole later Saturday to determine what caused it and how long repairs will take.
Austin sinkhole
© Rodolfo Gonzalez / American-Statesman
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