Sinkholes around the world appear in the ground (even in cemeteries) and cause buildings to collapse and roads to disappear. Discover a photo compilation of recent sinkholes and of the biggest and most amazing potholes from around the world. OMG!
1. Sinkhole that opened up in the driveway of a house in Walter’s Ash, Buckinghamshire. Picture: Reuters
2. In May 2010, a huge, almost perfectly circular, sinkhole measuring 66 feet (20 m) wide and 100 feet (30 m) deep suddenly opened up, swallowing a three-storey building and a house in Guatemala City. Authorities blamed heavy rains caused by tropical storm Agatha. Picture: Guatemala’s Presidency, Luis Echeverria/AP
3. A National Corvette Museum handout photo shows the 40-foot sinkhole that opened up under the museum floor, swallowing eight Corvettes, including the historic 1992 White 1 Millionth Corvette
Picture: REUTERS
4. In December 2001, a house in Waihi, New Zealand, collapsed into a huge hole measuring 50 metres wide and 15 metres deep. A family of five, including three young children, escaped serious injury despite their home crashing into a chasm created by an old mine shaft collapsing in the middle of the night.
Picture: Dean Purcell/AP
5. An aerial photo shows a massive crater that appeared in a residential street in Schmalkalden, Germany, in November 2010 Picture: Jens Meyer/AP
6. A man looks at a house that started leaning after a tunnel collapse in the Russian Black sea resort of Sochi in March 2013. The house, unnocupied at the time, began leaning after a tunnel on a nearby road construction project collapsed. Picture: REUTERS/Nina Zotina
7. In August 2009, a road in Hefei, Anhui Province, China, suddenly sank, causing one taxi and three motobikes to fall into the hole. Picture: Top Photo Group / Rex Features
8. In January 2007, a huge crater opened at the construction site of the Pinheiros subway station in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Officials said a passenger minivan had fallen to the bottom of a 40-metre (130-foot)-deep pit dug to facilitate delivery of supplies for workers, and the lip of the hole gave way to a landslide, taking with it vehicles on a roadway around the edge and dumping tons of earth, asphalt and concrete on them. Picture: MAURICIO LIMA/AFP/Getty Images
9. Rescuers look for survivors after a building collapsed into a large hole in Guangzhou, China, in January 2013. The demolition was caused by the construction of a metro line and left a nine-metre deep hole in the ground. Picture: China Foto Press/Barcroft Media
10. In September 2009, four firefighters escaped injury when their fire engine sunk into a large hole caused by a burst water main in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles. Picture: Nick Ut/AP
If you want some more, click here.
[…] Since most sinkholes caused by nature would simply be holes opened up by displaced and or unstable soil on the surface, a natural sinkhole would be only 50 feet across at most and some 30 to 40 feet deep at best. Yet, some of the massively deep holes, some from hundreds of feet deep to seemingly bottomless would have to be caused by a TBM, not by natural means. Some of the very large and deep sinkholes have very smooth walls, a dead give away that they were drilled.Subterranean city water supply via a newly drilled sinkhole? […]