If in Guatemala, don't forget to look under the bed

[rabs]

A quirky story for the morning folks.

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Guatemalan woman finds huge sinkhole under bed



You may sometimes wish the ground would swallow you up, but for some the danger of disappearing down a deep hole is all too real.

The people of Guatemala City are increasingly unable to trust what's beneath their feet because of treacherous sinkholes.

The latest person to get a shock was 65-year-old Inocenta Hernandez. "When we heard the loud boom we thought a gas canister from a neighbouring home had exploded, or there had been a crash on the street.

"We rushed out to look and saw nothing. A gentleman told me that the noise came from my house, and we searched until we found it under my bed."

A reporter for AFP news agency who visited her home, estimated the hole, which appeared late on Monday, was 12.2m (40ft) deep and 80cm (32inches) in diameter.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/21/guatemala-sinkhole-under-bed

[Judi Lynn]

1. What a nightmare. 40 feet down a narrow tube in the dark. How horrible.

There is nothing in the world which could prepare you for a shock like this.

It really looks as if they should relocate that city AWAY from there as soon as they can. Surely there's someway to test the ground immediately, if they care about the people.

From the article:

Others have not been so lucky. A giant sinkhole that formed nearby in 2007 was 150m deep and swallowed several homes and a truck, killing three people. Local residents were forced to evacuate for days.

~snip~
Sinkholes, formed by natural erosion, can be gradual but are often sudden. Guatemala City is built on volcanic deposits and especially prone to sinkholes. They are often blamed on leaky sewers or on heavy rain.

This is just wrong. The world should NOT have so many ridiculous hazards in it.

Incidently, I saw a headline a couple of days ago saying manhole covers are exploding off the streets in Brazil!

[naaman fletcher]

2. I agree

"they should relocate that city AWAY from there as soon as they can"

Clearly, the answer to the problem is to move the capital city and its 2.5 million people somewhere else.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Video here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14252489

Maybe she could fit a large seat over it and use it as an en suite for the foreseeable future.

[rabs]

8. Yeah, grandma can call it her

Guate-loo.

(Okay, don't hit me.)

OT -- quite a story you have over there. Had to set the alarm for 7 a.m. the other day to catch the Murdoch saga. It was quite a show.

[Peace Patriot]

4. That is an incredible picture--and event!

Having been born and raised and lived all my life in California, I am "philosophical" about the earth moving under my feet. But these sinkholes in Guatemala are another thing entirely. Imagine the earth suddenly, without warning, simply NOT BEING THERE. It is totally bizarre and disturbing--the stuff of nightmares.

I'm curious about the history of this. Is it a new phenomenon? Did sinkholes appear 50 years ago, a 100 years ago, 200 years ago? Are there Indigenous legends about it? Is it new? Is it occurring elsewhere in Guatemala, or the region (or the world)? I think Guatemala City is pretty old, so probably its first builders didn't have the technology and engineering expertise to understand the geology of the ground they were building on. And even in modern times, many mistakes have been made in that regard--building on or near earthquake fault lines, building skyscrapers on or near earthquake fault lines (now they put them on rollers), putting developments on landfill or in flood zones, building houses on crumbly cliffs and--alas, alas--placing nuclear power facilities in the path of tsunamis in a major earthquake zone. There is a whole lot of corruption involved in these decisions but not always--sometimes it's just understandable lack of info--and it doesn't look like that is the case with these sinkholes--corrupt building practices (but I don't know for sure). It may be that the earth is just still quite a mystery to us and full of surprises. (Our science/engineering-based society can be quite arrogant in this regard. We think we know everything. Ha!)

I think I'll do some googling on it.

[Peace Patriot]

5. Here's an informative story: "Don't Call the Guatemala Sinkhole a Sinkhole"

DON'T CALL THE GUATEMALA SINKHOLE A SINKHOLE

Analysis by Michael Reilly
Wed Jun 2, 2010 09:34 PM ET

The giant sinkhole that opened beneath downtown Guatemala City over the weekend is all the rage right now. There's just one problem: it isn't a sinkhole.

"Sure, it looks a lot like a sinkhole," geologist Sam Bonis told Discovery News from his home in Guatemala. "And a whale looks a lot like a fish, but calling it one would be very misleading."

Instead, Bonis prefers the term "piping feature" -- a decidedly less sexy label for the 100-foot deep, 66-foot wide circular chasm. But it's an important distinction, he maintains, because "sinkholes" refer to areas where bedrock is solid but has been eaten away by groundwater, forming a geological Swiss cheese whose contours are nearly impossible to predict.

The situation beneath the country's capital is far different, and more dangerous.

The lion's share of the city is built on pumice fill -- ash flows made up of loose, gravel-like particles deposited during ancient volcanic eruptions. In places, the debris is piled over 600 feet thick, filling up what would otherwise be a v-shaped valley of faulted bedrock.....

(SNIP)

...by mislabeling the feature a sinkhole, it distracts from a dangerous situation that could be mitigated, if not neutralized, by better handling of the city's runoff and waste water.

(MORE)

http://news.discovery.com/earth/dont-call-the-guatemala-sinkhole-a-sinkhole.html

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And here's a whole bunch of info--wiki, on Guatemala City--including the latest on the "sinkholes" ("piping features"). See "Piping Pseudokarst" (about 3/4 down the page). The latest from the experts is that all the "sinkholes" (I've counted three, so far, googling) are related to an aging, leaking sewage system which is eroding these light soils that filled in volcanic pockets long ago.

Ergo, it's a MODERN problem.

Lord, Guatemala City has been occupied since 1000 BC! It was a major Mayan city (Kaminaljuyu) and later the capitol of "the United Provinces of Central America" (1821) after independence from Spain. It was a small Spanish town for a while, before that, and then, when colonial Spain's capital in Central America (Antigua Guatemala) was hit by earthquakes, Spain moved their capitol to Guatemala City. Now it is THE major hub of Guatemala and major seaport.

I think all three "sinkholes" have been in poor neighborhoods--so that may be the heart of the matter--neglect of the aging sewer system because the rich in the glitzier parts of the city don't care. Could be. Not sure.

It looks like quite a beautiful and interesting city.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_City

[Alameda]

6. There are a lot of sinkholes in PA due to mining activity.

My sister lives there, so I hear about them. I would not buy property there because of that problem. There are places where you know mines exist, but there are also wildcat mines that nobody knows about that just collapse.

Look at this....Centralia PA...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania

[rabs]

7. A biggie from June 2010.

These holes also seem to occur after heavy rains, tropical storms and when a hurricane goes by.


edit - typo

[Peace Patriot]

9. Thanks for the pix! It's so bizarre--it looks photoshopped! Couldn't be real.

An aging, leaking sewage system caused this? It doesn't seem possible. Yet that is the explanation given by people who should know.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Double post. Don't bother to read. I erased it. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

11. Those images just leave a person stunned, and horrified.

How much meanness are we supposed to take from life, anyway? Inside the pit are hundreds of dirty TeaBaggers? A tornado will descend the moment the holes open, followed by a volcano, a flood, and an earthquake? Oh, yeah, don't forget about a lightning bolt striking, followed by a raging fire to do it all up right.

How can the towns possibly cope with this colossal holes, anyway? Holy smokes. Is there any plan you've heard of for "fixing" that thing? Maybe endless lines of trucks bringing dirt and rocks from Chuquicamata.

Thanks for the reminder they CAN get larger and scarier than the one under the lady's bed!

When they get so mobile they can actually ring your doorbell, then as you open the door, open up where your doorstep was, we'll know we're all in for a bumpy ride.