5/4/2004: Sinkhole eats car

Yes, it's true; sometimes a sinkhole will just come up and eat a car.

I have the whole series of pics of this thing sinking (I'm fairly sure it's this car), should I put them up?

Go ahead!

There, but for the grace of God, goes my car.

Why don't things like this ever happen to my car. I could do with a new one, and I'm sure the Insurance Company would agree after seeing it at the bottom of the pit.

Can some please explain what exactly, a sinkhole is?

Thanks Beestie!

This reminds me of a scene from "10.5"...

One has to wonder why there is something resembling a fitting for a drainage section in the bottom of the hole.

That hole has been most likely been caused by a water pipe bursting and washing away the soil around the pipe .. but if you knew the number of potential sinkholes, caused by unstable geology, abandoned unknown mines, and oil extraction .. you'd never drive on any U.S. road or highway.

http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/julaug99/minehole.htm

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/mine/kansas02.htm

Oy

No one was driving when this happened, I hope
I have to agree with leah, I could use a car too, one with an onstar system that could alert me of these things

Re: Oy

Quote:

Originally posted by poohbearbeth No one was driving when this happened, I hope I have to agree with leah, I could use a car too, one with an onstar system that could alert me of these things

Pennsylvania is extremely good at sinkholes. Much of the southeastern portion of the state is Karst Topography. The whole area is underlain by limestone. Mild acids in underground water react with the limestone and it basically just fizzes away, albeit slowly. Eventually there isn't anything supporting the soil and the whole thing just drops. (my undergraduate degree is in Geography and Planning. We were all over this geomorphology stuff.)

One disrupted the expansion of route 202 at King of Prussia. They had to fill it first. The relevant article is about 2/3 of the way down the page, headined "Massive Highway Improvements Garner Governor's Praise." It notes that they had to pump 1.4 million cubic FEET of pressure injected grout into the holes. That's a lot of freaking grout. They had to build a grout manufacturing plant at the site, I believe.

ode to a sinkhole

To richlevy

I want one of those tv's in the car too, so while I am waiting to be rescued I can watch some movies
While you are taking orders.....a side order of fries, and a coke to go with that:p

1.4 Million cubic feet.

Let's see, that's a cube that's 112 feet wide, by 112 feet tall, by 112 feet long.

What can I compare that to? Um, I bet the White House is roughly the same size. That's enough grout to fill the White House. There you go.

This sink hole happened at the entrance to a mall in Baltimore. See:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/loc...ocal-headlines

The road and pipes were privately constructed and maintained, Adams said. Officials with the Rouse Co., parent company of Owings Mills Mall, said ownership of the road is not clear.

$$ Ca-ching! $$

Looks like a couple women are going to get a nice payment from the Mall.

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the first pic shows splashing at the front of the car.....meaning that that stupid ass lady drove into the freaking "puddle". and then she stays in the friggin thing until she has to swim out? i hope her insurance company saw this and didnt pay. dumb ass.

every year when we have flooding, the douchebags on the news go over the same things " dont drive into flooded areas, dont try to walk through, blah blah blah. I always think " well, duh, who dont know that? why do they have to tell us every year?" I guess my questions are answered.

good pics, jag.

"They" always say you should never drive through standing water when you don't know the depth.

Great collection of pics, Jaguar. I saw these a few years ago. I never heard the story behing them. It's obviously the aftermath of a flood in Europe. But that's all you can see in the pics. Do you know more?

No sorry, I think i grabbed them off a dir on a server somewhere a few years ago, they ended up in my gigantic (~3G) random pics folder and I just happened to remember them.

I hope you know that this is the same lady that needs to have stupid instructions on products. For example

Hairdryer : do not use while sleeping
Batman Cape : Does not make user fly
Charcoal : Do not eat
And other stupid ones ( can't remember them all, ate too much charcoal)

It's a different car then because this one was supposed to have happened last week. Still a great set of shots!

yeah, that and the car is a different color, the street is different, and the blue one looks like it has european tags.

it doesnt look llike the iotd one was hiden by a puddle, either.

OK, the woman wasn't smart to drive through the puddle.

In her defense though, a calm, flat, circular shaped puddle on a road appears to be only a few inches deep at the most. She obviously didn't know the pothole was over 10 feet deep. If she did, she wouldn't have driven through it.

Every rainy day, I walk home past a puddle on a busy street. Hundred of people drive through this puddle. They all assume that it's only a couple of inches deep, and they are right. Have none of you ever driven through a puddle before? Most puddles are shallow.

If you are going to mock anyone in the picture, I think the old guy in the front, with the big gut and the bag, is certainly mock-worthy. He just stands there like a doofus during the whole thing.

yeah, you're right, glatt. hindsight is 20/20. looking at the pic where the cop is standing there, i think I would have gone through in my jeep. the close ups don't show that very well.

Quote:

Originally posted by dar512 When I first read this, I thought, "What a change. From geology to psychology." Then I realized it was just going from rocks in the ground to people with rocks in their heads.

bruce, do you have a link to that clip?

I think what got 202 wasn't an ordinary sinkhole but a limestone fault -- basically a huge mucking crack in the bedrock, like a cave only filled with soil. Put any weight on it, or disturb it too much, and the soil moves out, creating sinkholes.

There certainly are plenty of ordinary sinkholes in the area -- N. Gulph Road had a number of them caused by an underground stream, and the K.O.P mall has had them appear in it's parking lot.

If you remember the movie "Contact" with Jodi Foster, their were several scenes in the first half filmed at the huge radio telescope in Puerto Rico, Observatorio de Arecibo. A quote from their website says:

"Hidden among fields and hills is the world's largest radar-radio telescope, operated by the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center of Cornell University. A 20-acre dish, with a 600-ton suspended platform hovering eerily over it, lies in a 563-ft-deep sinkhole in the karst landscape. The observatory has been used to look for extraterrestrial life. Hidden among fields and hills is the world's largest radar-radio telescope, operated by the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center of Cornell University. A 20-acre dish, with a 600-ton suspended platform hovering eerily over it, lies in a 563-ft-deep sinkhole in the karst landscape. The observatory has been used to look for extraterrestrial life."

well, I'll try a gif

Hey! Isn't that the radiotelescope that was used in that James Bond movie? The one that was supposedly in Cuba? Goldeneye I think?

Brian

Yup. Was also in "Contact".

Contact.....God that film sucked