Sinkholes
S


Arrow Down

Sinkhole forces evacuation in Florida

florida driveway sinkhole
© WTSPTwenty-foot sinkhole swallows woman's driveway.
The hole was discovered outside a house in Holiday, Florida on Sunday morning.

Local fire authorities evacuated the elderly resident of the house, as well as neighbours as a precaution.

Pasco County Fire and Rescue officials said the hole is 20 feet wide and 15 feet deep and does not appear to be growing.

This incident is the latest in a series of sinkholes to open up in Florida. Last year houses were evacuated in Dunedin after a hole opened up in November, and near the same location a man was killed in February when a chasm opened in his bedroom.

Bizarro Earth

Sinkhole causes traffic nightmare in Mexican capital

Mexico City sinkhole 24/01/14
© EFEThe western part of Mexico's capital was plunged into traffic chaos after a water-main break created a sinkhole on the city's outer beltway.
Mexico City, Jan 23 (EFE).- The western part of Mexico's capital was plunged into traffic chaos on Thursday after a water-main break created a sinkhole on the city's outer beltway.

The hole, which is 2 meters (6.5 ft.) wide and 3 meters (9.8 ft.) deep, lies at the beltway interchange with two main surface thoroughfares.

Police have been deployed in an effort to ease traffic tangles, the Mexico City Public Safety Department said, adding that repairs to the water main are expected to take 12 hours.

Arrow Down

Huge sinkhole opens up in downtown Detroit

Image
That sinking feeling: Work crews examine a 14-feet-deep sinkhole that opened up in downtown Detroit over the weekend
Traffic has come to a halt in downtown Detroit after a sinkhole opened up in the middle of one of the city's main streets.

The disruption occurred just blocks from the North American International Auto Show and could take days to repair.

The hole originally was about twice as big as a manhole cover but now measures about 14 feet by 10 feet and is on Randolph street at the intersection of Jefferson, next to the Coleman A. Young municipal building and the Millender Center, WWJ-AM reports.


Galaxy

Heaven and Earth: Unusual natural events and strange phenomena from around the world in December 2013 and January 2014

Image
Chicago from the air: frozen in January 2014
Heaven and Earth / A collection of amateur and media video reports from December 5, 2013 to January 15, 2014

Fireballs, strange lights in the sky, massive sinkholes, new islands, erupting volcanoes, powerful tidal surges and storms, the jet stream going haywire, mass animal deaths... in terms of Earth Changes and other strange phenomena, it looks like 2014 is picking up where 2013 left off!


This new series replaces "20** IS STRANGE". It's pretty much the same thing - cataloguing unusual natural events and other strange phenomena. The biggest change is the title ;)

This is an educational/teaching and research purposes only video. This application is not commercial and is free to use.

Bizarro Earth

Western Kansas sinkhole continues to deepen

Image
Eh, where'd the land go?

A massive sinkhole in western Kansas continues to grow. The sinkhole recently developed in Wallace County, near the town of Sharon Springs. By the time it was noticed by a rancher, the hole was more than 200 feet across and 90 feet deep. The sinkhole has taken many by surprise, though not Rex Buchanan, who heads the Kansas Geological Survey.


Arrow Down

Golfer swallowed up by 12-foot sinkhole in Waterloo, Illinois

Image
Mike Peters, Hank Martinez, and Ed Magaletta call to Mark Mihal in the sinkhole
  • 43-year-old mortgage banker Mark Mihal was playing golf with three friends
  • He was at the 14th hole of the Annbriar golf course in Waterloo, Illinois
  • Noticing a depression in the ground, he walked over and ground gave way
  • He became trapped in the 12-foot sinkhole and had to be rescued
  • Mr Mihal suffered a broken shoulder and torn tendons after the fall
A claustrophobic mortgage banker has told the story of how a round of golf ended up with him plunging into a sinkhole that opened as he walked across the 14th hole.

Mark Mihal, 43, and his partner Mike Peters, were easily beating regular opponents Ed Magaletta and Hank Martinez during a game in early March last year.

Mr Mihal and Mr Peters had both outdriven the other pair on the 14th hole of the Annbriar golf course in Waterloo, Illinois.

Each landed the ball nicely on the fairway, leaving Mr Magaletta and Mr Martinez at the edge of the woods trying to clear a bunker.

But while Mr Mihal was waiting for Mr Peters to hit his second shot, he noticed a shallow, bathtub-size depression in the grass of the fairway.

It was out of place on the well-kept course, and looked as if it would be tricky to play out of.

He walked over and stepped into the depression - and promptly vanished.

Arrow Down

Large sinkhole opens in Manhattan

Image
Tuesday night about midnight, one of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)'s water lines broke along 5th Avenue and 13th Street in Manhattan.

The water line that broke was part of NYC's original Croton water system installed in 1877. NYC currently has three water systems that supply drinking to residents: the Croton, Catskill, and Delaware systems; Croton is the oldest of the three. Currently, it provides about 10% of the City's daily demand. According to the DEP, "Croton water is primarily used in low-lying areas of the Bronx and Manhattan, where the water can be conveyed by gravity."

The 36-inch diameter pipe broke, and the water from it washed away the dirt under the asphalt, causing a sinkhole. "The dirt is what supports the pavement," said a spokesperson from the DEP.

The water to that line is now turned off, and the DEP is making repairs. The DEP said that they cannot speculate how long the repairs will take at this point.

5th Avenue is closed between 13th and 14th Street. The B, C, D, E, F, M, and Q subway lines are affected. Service changes can be viewed on MTA's website.

Arrow Down

Mandatory sinkhole insurance coverage proposed in Missouri State Senate bill


A Missouri lawmaker lays the groundwork for homeowners to get sinkhole insurance.

Our entire region is at risk for sinkholes because of the porous limestone and Karst formations under the Ozarks.

But most insurance companies exclude sinkholes from coverage.

That's a gap Senate Bill 691 seeks to fill.

Springfield homeowner Mark Hill is still paying for a near disaster that happened one year ago.

"We had a collapse between the two houses which was not a sinkhole, but was an old mine shaft," he said.

When the mine shaft opened up it went well under the corner of his neighbor's house and extended eight feet underneath his house.

"My air conditioning unit fell into the hole," he said.

Stop

Walthall County family discovers mysterious hole in yard

Image
Walthall County hole is like a vacuum, and if the family pours water into it, it guzzles it right down.
A Walthall County family sent us a video Sunday morning of what they call a mysterious hole forming in their yard. The home is on Jayess road in Tylertown, Walthall County.

"We don't know what this is. There's a sink hole in our yard, and it's sucking air." says Max McKenzie.

They say it's like a vacuum, and if they pour water into it, it guzzles it right down.

"I don't know what it is, but we're going to have to do something to find out," says Max. His 14-year-old son, Brad, discovered it.

"I heard noise coming from the ground, I got my ear down there and listened to it," says Brad.

They took a shovel and dug around the hole, hoping to figure out what it is. They even stuck a pipe down there to see how deep it is. And no matter how much water they pour into the hole, it guzzles the water, and it just disappears.

Smoking

Despite worldwide anti-smoking propaganda campaign, the percentage of people who smoke appears to be increasing

Image
Stop me
Despite a steep drop in the number of smokers in the United States over the last three decades, researchers say that cigarettes remain a growth industry for the rest of the world because of expanding population.

In a package of studies published online Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that the total number of world smokers with a pack-a-day habit had "increased significantly."

Even though the global smoking rate has declined since 1980 by roughly 25 percent for men and 42 percent for women, the total number of smokers has grown from 721 million to 967 million. The total number of cigarettes consumed annually has risen from 4.96 trillion to 6.25 trillion.

"The number of smokers has increased steadily worldwide, and there are preliminary indications that global prevalence among men increased in recent years," wrote lead study author Marie Ng, a world health statistician at the University of Washington, and her colleagues.

The studies in JAMA were published to mark the 50th anniversary of the U.S. surgeon general's first report on smoking, a landmark document that first laid out the health dangers of the habit.

Comment: The real tug of war is between people who submit to government propaganda and those who resist tyranny.

The main goal of tobacco smoking bans is "to change societal behavior" by stigmatizing smoking, making it less convenient and less socially acceptable. By raising the stakes, it helped transform a complaint into a right, so that people annoyed by tobacco smoke now felt justified in demanding that it be eliminated everywhere they might want to go, including other people's property.

In short, they have conditioned the majority of the people on the planet to behave like Nazis and think it is normal.

See also:

The devious plan of anti-smoking campaigns to control people and stop them from using their brain

Let's All Light Up!

5 Health Benefits of Smoking

Nicotine Lessens Symptoms Of Depression In Nonsmokers

Nicotine helps Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Patients

Brain Researchers: Smoking increases intelligence