5 Giant Holes That Devoured Everything Around Them
Tue, May 20, 2008
Guatemala Sinkhole. Image via AP
Imagine walking down the street, minding your own business, when suddenly the earth begins to shake and fold in. Imagine that the very ground you stand on is disintegrating beneath your feet, being devoured by a giant hole. No - this isn’t some lewd joke about Paris Hilton or something from Return of the Jedi. No, today we’re going to explore the phenomenon of sinkholes and some of the most incredible and destructive examples.
Before we go into them however, you’ll probably need a bit of amateur scientific background from me. In short, sinkholes form when the bedrock or soil underneath subsides, forcing the topsoil (or in many cases concrete) to collapse. They can be exceptionally large (several hundred meters in diameter and depth) and can swallow everything directly above. So, without further ado, here are five giant holes that devoured everything around them.
5. Montrose Avenue sinkhole
80 feet in diameter and 15 feet deep, a huge sinkhole opened up in the middle of Montrose Avenue after a water main break flooded the tarmac. The avenue remained closed for a couple weeks and helped shut down roughly 8 businesses, right after Christmas, in January this year. Fortunately, no one was killed.
Images Via Flickr Users: 1, 2, 3,
Want to know what the flood that caused this sinkhole looked like?
4. Macungie, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania 1986
At over 75 feet wide and 35 feet deep, the Macungie sinkhole formed in June, 1986. Stabilization and repair costs totaled $450,000.
Image via DCNR
3. Bowling Green KY
A 200 ft wide and 35 deep, this sinkhole collapsed in Bowling Green Kentucky, due to water runoff, underneath the soil. The site was right next to the proposed TriModal Transpark. I bet they’re glad they didn’t build there!
2. Sarisariñama Plateau
Located in the Jaua-Sarisariñama National Park in Venezuela are some of the biggest sinkholes in the world. The sinkholes are 350 meters wide and 350 meters deep and are a geological mystery. The huge vertical walls have created an isolated ecosystem, with completely unique species of both flora and fauna. They’re so isolated in fact, that the sinkholes were only discovered in 1974. The scientific expedition was documented in David Nott’s book “into the lost world.”
1. Guatemala City
On the 23rd of February 2007, a 330 foot deep sinkhole swallowed up over a dozen homes in a crowded neighbourhood in Guatemala City. Over 1000 people were evacuated and two people were killed.
The giant hole emitted a foul stench, tremors and loud noises. The authorities blamed the sinkhole on a ruptured underground sewage flow.
Images from AP, orignally found from deputy dog
and if you understand Spanish, there’s a news report here, which just shows how large the hole is:
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May 20th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Speaking of giant holes I think you should see this one.
It is called Red Lake and it’s situated in Imotski, Croatia, Europe. Red Lake is 1.5 km far from the town Imotski. This true Karst phenomenon was named Red Lake because of its reddish rocks. This deepest European hatch is 200 m in diameter. The water is about 300 m deep and its bottom is under the sea level. In 1998, the lake was explored by about 50 speleologists who were members of the great international expedition. In spite of all that, the ultimate depth of the lake hasn’t been established.
You should also see Blue Lake, situated just a few hundred meters from the Red one.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Would it be inappropriate to make an Anna Nicole Smith joke here?
May 20th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
@detroitdude
No, that is not inappropriate. Jokes about Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, Britney Spears and Linsay Lohan are also acceptable.
May 21st, 2008 at 12:38 am
They divided by zero!!!!!!
May 21st, 2008 at 12:39 am
Rosie O’Donnell are also acceptable.
May 21st, 2008 at 12:47 am
If you are going to entertain a career in journalism, especially on the web, you need to get out of your self-centered world. “Montrose Avenue” is not a sufficient description of where #5 took place. A cursory search yielded Toronto, Chicago, NYC, LA, and Richmond, not to name the handful of small towns I personally know with such names.
May 21st, 2008 at 12:49 am
thats amazing
May 21st, 2008 at 1:13 am
6th largest hole: http://weblogs.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/politics/blog/george-w-bush-picture.jpeg
May 21st, 2008 at 1:13 am
Check out Lake Peigneur.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur
There’s some videos of this happening around.
May 21st, 2008 at 1:14 am
What, no Jefferson Island?
May 21st, 2008 at 1:23 am
You forgot “The Door to Hell” in Turkmenistan it’s badder that all of them.
http://www.englishrussia.com/?p=1830
May 21st, 2008 at 2:42 am
Why didn’t you mention anything about the recent one in Texas,it was huuuge.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:10 am
Nice hole.s
May 21st, 2008 at 4:51 am
“The Montrose Avenue Sinkhole”??
Okay, I give up. Where IS “Montrose Avenue.”
May 21st, 2008 at 4:58 am
You forgot the most famous hole - Cortney Love!
May 21st, 2008 at 5:01 am
Wow! Those were some amazing photos. The earth is mysterious, You just never know!
Nicholas Wilson
May 21st, 2008 at 5:51 am
The 1971 sinkhole/landslide at Saint-Jean-Vianney, Quebec, destroyed 41 homes and killed 31 people. It must have been terrifying. Late one night, land dropped 100′ to form a half-mile-wide crater. The homes slid one by one into the crater’s liquified clay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Jean-Vianney%2C_Quebec
May 21st, 2008 at 7:00 am
Also have a look at Lake Peigneur: The Swirling Vortex of Doom From the article …. The sucking force was so strong that it reversed the flow of a 12-mile-long canal which led out to the Gulf of Mexico, and dragged 11 barges from that canal into the swirling vortex, where they disappeared into the flooded mines below. ….
May 21st, 2008 at 7:05 am
I forget the name of it, but it’s not the one listed in the comments above. there was a lake with a salt mine underneath it, and it literally ruptured a hole in the bottom of the lake, which sucked up the whole lake and tons of nearby homes. does that not count cuz it was a man made disaster?
either way, great list and pics.
May 21st, 2008 at 7:29 am
yeah, but what about Courtney Love?
May 21st, 2008 at 8:33 am
Further giant holes to add, are G.W.Bush, McCain, and Hilary Clinton, amongst others that have drove me crazy this year.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:47 am
What do you get if you cross an elephant and a kangeroo? Sink holes all over Australia.
May 21st, 2008 at 10:22 am
In that case…
when yo’ momma sits around the Sarisariñama Plateau….
May 21st, 2008 at 10:30 am
First caves, now holes? Looking at your most recent articles, out of 10 only 1 could seriosly be considered about the environment. This site should really be called “zany wacky non-news/lists” graffiti.
May 21st, 2008 at 1:45 pm
And another one in Russia…
May 21st, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Torito restaurant’s visitors must have been amazed seein’ swimming hole..
May 21st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Anyone think Gears of War is a little bit to real ?
May 21st, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Does anyone know what they do to holes like this when they happen in cities? Like lets say 1 year down the line after something like this happens what is there? are things just left as they were and the area sealed off from public? Forever?
May 21st, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Consider this sinkhole explanation …
Though some sink holes are caused by careless deeds of people, or maybe other natural and explainable causes … many of the circular sinkholes occur because of a solid object that was once there in no longer in place … many Ancient Crafts having long since settled undetected below surface… are now of a quickened acceleration, have simply vanished from one place to appear in a higher place ….
Many people would be surprised to know …. just how much UFOs and other Ancient Celestial Objects are associated with some of Earth’s so called natural disasters … and surprised even more so when the frequency veil surrounding this planet is totally dissolved … proof is in the pudding … we just haven’t received our due portion of the pudding … not just yet …
Some Ancient Crafts drained of their ‘plasma cores’ had long since settled just beneath earth’s surface, some had settled very deep below surface …. The bigger the craft or object once settled, the bigger the sinkhole left behind when they are plucked away … cloaking barriers kept them undetected … many had searched, but could not find them ….
SOON… a global trembling of an earthquake measuring an unheard of magnitude, will take place as a matrix opening beneath the ocean floor gives way for the passing through of a mammoth size Structure …. It will be of a glistening Metallic Object of Exotic Material … It will be manually operated …. It is an Ancient Pyramid Power Facility … The Eye of this Pyramid will roar of a powerful Plasma Field of Energy … the roar will be felt as a tremble throughout the planet …. It will elevate itself up to temporarily sit outside of Earth’s atmosphere … not many tall structures will be left standing after this trembling quake …
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May 21st, 2008 at 9:07 pm
The Montrose Ave sinkhole was in Chicago, right by the Damen stop on the Brown Line if I’m not mistaken. You can tell by their accents in the video that you’re lookin at the midwest, though they sound like they’re from Minnesota. That water main that broke was something like 100 years old, as most of them in the city are. Great video.
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Now I will have nightmares about Cortney Love holes sucking me and my lil’ house into a dark wet frightening place!!
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:24 pm
I love the first pic!
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:10 am
One of the mentioned holes in Guatemala might be of a natural formation.
It could be an old lava tube or some sort of a cave.
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Wow!!!
May 30th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Basically the reason for most of them is acological long term changed made by humen being. gold mining ites, oil search sites and sea drying for magnizum. crazy world and we are responsible for all this.
You can see hundreds of them also in Dead sea in Israel which is one of the most amazing place i have ever seen.