10 Biggest Sinkholes That Destroyed Cities

hi everyone it's katrina from entire city blocks disappearing in seconds to cities collapsing before our eyes here are 10 of the most dramatic sinkholes from around the world number 10. daisera sinkhole the landscape of daiseta texas was permanently transformed on may 7 2008 when a small sinkhole opened and grew for hours eventually reaching dimensions of 600 by 525 feet the gaping void which is somewhere between 90 and 150 feet deep caused the nearby farm to market road 770 which sat just 80 feet away to drop by as much as 5 inches and the incident occurred just a block away from the local high school and fire station thankfully nobody was injured in the ordeal for several months afterward the texas department of transportation aired on the safe side and kept the road closed meanwhile the local government spent thousands of dollars on research to determine exactly what caused the sinkhole but for the most part life resumed as usual for locals who adapted impressively well to the newly created pit residents lynn and deborah frijia did not let the incident stop them from building their home nearby just a year and a half later the beaumont enterprise reported their house which they are convinced is in a perfectly safe location sits at the edge of a subterranean salt dome that caused the sinkhole when it collapsed due to erosion would you risk it let me know in the comments below number 9. berezniki berezniki a russian city of roughly 150 000 residents located in the ural mountains is slowly being swallowed by sinkholes that are forming due to large underground voids the city was built on top of a potash mine which helped to create large underground empty spaces pillars and walls made from soluble salt are the only structure supporting the caverns making them weak in the first place and an underwater spring that began flowing into the mine in 2006 only worsened the situation the biggest sinkhole nicknamed the grandfather measures nearly 1 312 feet in diameter and over 656 feet deep and the only rail line leading into and out of the potash mines is at risk of being consumed by it around 10 percent of the world's potash is produced at the berezniki mines which serve as the city's largest employer closing these mines would be devastating to the local economy while officials debate over whether to relocate berizniki to a more stable site on top of solid bedrock the local government uses various instruments to monitor and predict the formation and growth of sinkholes engineers insist that no more sinkholes should form now that the mine is mostly flooded according to amusing planet but around 12 000 residents have left the city so far indicating that the general consensus may not agree number eight the lost city of ubar mentioned in both the koran and in a thousand and one arabian nights the fabled city of ubar is hailed as the former hub of the frankincense trade dating back three thousand years before the birth of jesus christ located in the arabian desert in modern day oman legend goes the incredibly wealthy and powerful ancient metropolis was swallowed up by the sand sometime between 300 and 500 a.d as punishment from god for its ruler's greed much like atlantis which many if not most scholars consider a mythical place that never actually existed researchers long doubted that ubar was once a real place based on this doubt british archaeologist t.e lawrence also known as lawrence of arabia nicknamed the alleged site the atlantis of the sands expert suspicions were disproven in 1992 when a team of archaeologists discovered the buried fortress in a barren swath of desert they announced their findings following a two-month excavation during which they unearthed an eight-sided structure a nearby neolithic village and evidence of how the city fell literally as it turns out ubar was built over a limestone cavern and eventually its weight caused a massive sinkhole to open up and devour most of the city what little remained afterward was abandoned the 5 000 year old ruins represent a city that once grew processed and shipped frankincense a resin that was as valuable as gold and had numerous uses including in cremations ceremonies perfumes and medicines number 7. guatemala city in mid-2010 a gaping sinkhole measuring roughly 60 feet wide and 300 feet deep opened up in guatemala city it reportedly swallowed a three-story building and was 30 stories deep people were quick to blame agatha a tropical storm that had recently swept through the region causing severe flooding that appeared to trigger the sinkhole an enormous hole had already collapsed in 2007 in guatemala city killing five people and costing about 2.7 million dollars to fill but as you're about to learn things aren't always as they seem in a national geographic interview shortly after the catastrophe geologist sam bonus blamed human activity more specifically he identified a burst sewer pipe or storm drain as the possible culprits responsible for hollowing out the underground cavity that led to the sinkhole's formation but beyond that bonus explained that guatemala city's ground is largely made up of loose unconsolidated material called pumiceville from past volcanic eruptions this substance is extremely susceptible to erosion especially when water is involved fluids from these sewers or pipes erodes the uncemented ground the storm floods led it to finally collapse but was not solely responsible between the loose ground guatemala city's poor zoning and building codes and the lack of enforcement of existing codes the conditions amount to a recipe for disaster bonus argued that true sinkholes are natural phenomena meaning that in his opinion the gaping hole is something different and that the nameless partially man-made disaster in guatemala and others like it should be distinctly termed as something else the risk of other holes opening suddenly is very high number 6 mosaic gypsum stack sinkhole sinkholes are fairly common in florida where the bedrock is largely composed of limestone cavities limestone is a porous rock that is prone to collapsing under the weight of water saturated soil and the structures it supports another way sinkholes form is when water widens existing fractures in limestone bedrock in 2016 a massive 40-foot wide sinkhole of an unknown depth opened up on top of a gypsum stack in mulberry florida over the next three weeks around 215 million gallons of contaminated water drained into the floridan aquifer a fresh water source that millions of people rely on for their tap water workers from mosaic a fertilizer and animal feed company responsible for the gypsum stack installed pumps in the sinkhole to remove as much of the contaminated water as possible but the pumps did not remove all the water which was slightly radioactive and contaminated with phosphoric acid so the company put up nearby wells in an effort to collect the excess water mosaic reassured the public that their drinking water was safe and offered to test concerned residents water upon request working with representatives from the department of environmental protection the company promised to consistently monitor the leaking sinkhole to ensure contaminated water did not make its way into nearby homes and businesses number 5. the devil's sinkhole located on the western reaches of the edwards plateau region in texas the devil's sinkhole was once a sacred site for native americans and is home to millions of mexican free-tailed bats marked by an opening measuring 40 by 60 feet an initial 140 foot vertical drop leads to the main cavern which is estimated to be somewhere between 350 and 400 feet deep prehistoric campsites near the sinkhole dating back from 4000 to 2500 bc show that ancient people use the site evidence of exactly what the sinkhole significance was is lacking leaving experts to speculate that it was used for ritualistic purposes native americans also sourced high quality chert a rock used for tool making at the site later on cowboys and cavers gathered at the sinkhole where they descended into the cave and explored etching graffiti into the limestone walls and collecting artifacts and stalactites from the interior entrepreneurs began mining the bat infested sinkhole during the early 20th century capitalizing on its highly valuable guano or bat droppings which was processed into ammonia fertilizer to date no official archaeological investigations have been carried out at the site which became a national natural landmark in 1985. tours of the site focused mainly on the nightly emergence of the 4 million bats living within the sinkhole number 4 brazil city block sinkhole in early 2014 residents in the city of abe tetuba in northern brazil noticed electrical wires snapping and breaking above houses prompting them to vacate the immediate area on foot they watched in horror as a sinkhole opened up and swallowed dozens of homes a supermarket and a post office water erosion was to blame for the giant crater which caused extensive property damage but no injuries thanks to the quick thinking local's decision to flee when they noticed the electrical wires behaving strangely one panicked mother who was seven months pregnant even tossed her child out of a first floor window in a rush attempt to get them to safety neighbors took the child into their care returning to the home later on with a ladder moments after the expectant mother climbed down the building she had just escaped from collapsed estimated to be about the size of a city block the sinkhole displaced around 300 of the city's 78 thousand residents forcing them to take shelter with relatives or in a nearby gymnasium that was set up as a shelter engineers determined that the tragedy resulted from the neighborhood's rapid growth and the construction of houses near the maracatuira river causing water that would otherwise have been absorbed by plant roots to soak entirely into the soil and erode it undermining the stability of the land number three winter park sinkhole the upscale community of winter park florida has experienced its fair share of sinkholes over the years perhaps the most famous among them was a 350 foot wide 75-foot deep opening that emerged in 1981 swallowing the town's olympic-sized swimming pool a car dealership five porsches and the home of a resident named may rose williams in what geologist jim jamal claims is the largest sinkhole resulting from natural geological conditions the damages totaled 4 million dubbed florida's most famous sinkhole the pit became repurposed as lake rose a water body named after the resident whose home was engulfed in the ordeal as a result of the event the university of central florida established a research institute dedicated to predicting sinkholes and determining their causes another sinkhole opened up in winter park in 2013 swallowing residents suzanne blumenauer's backyard and damaging her swimming pool orange county officials deemed the woman's property unsafe for habitation as they monitored the 40 to 50 foot wide 30 to 40 foot deep sinkhole which sat just 20 feet from blumenhauer's back door number 2 fish eating sinkhole much like florida southwestern china's guangxi zhuang autonomous region can't seem to catch a break from sinkholes one particularly unfortunate farmer fell victim to this phenomenon in 2016 when a sinkhole opened up and swallowed around 25 tons of his fish the incident was completely unexpected for yang xuan chan who just days earlier anticipated a bountiful season for his fish breeding business his pond was almost completely drained in the ordeal which locals suspected was caused by mining activity at a nearby quarry the farmer's unforeseen losses totaled roughly 75 000 late last year an international team of scientists announced the discovery of a cluster of karst sinkholes in the limestone ridge region at the bottom of an 886ft sinkhole french speleologist botazi jean discovered evidence of a past human presence including unused firewood carved wood and piles of rocks resembling tombs he estimated the object's age at over a century old prompting him to wonder how people descended into the cave without modern equipment this discovery represents one cave system out of many that experts have found in the guangxi zhuang autonomous region in recent years including an enormous 236 million cubic foot cavern discovered in 2018 which researchers hailed as a world-class geological wonder number 1. dead sea sinkholes the banks of the dead sea are home to thousands of sinkholes with hundreds of new ones opening up every year as the water body depletes this problem has gotten noticeably worse in recent years to the point where the sinkholes are negatively affecting israel's tourism industry when the sinkholes first started appearing in the late 1980s local authorities filled them in with gravel hoping they constituted one-off occurrences but they kept on coming and while most of the sinkholes are small many are not and they are occurring at an unavoidably dangerous volume dead sea sinkholes have closed down campsites consumed unsuspecting bystanders and damaged most of a large date orchard the already alarming problem became infinitely more serious in 2014 when a sinkhole opened up across the region's main highway cutting the town of engetti and the rest of the area off from the rest of civilization for a long-standing kibbutz member named mazor who spoke with ael levy of the jerusalem post in 2015 the prognosis is grim everything is being destroyed mazer told levy everything you see here will collapse at some point nothing will remain at nearly 1 400 feet below sea level the dead sea is the lowest place on earth it's lost an estimated 82 feet of depth thus far losing an additional one meter every year according to mazor the sinkholes surrounding the extremely salty sea which is actually a lake occur when groundwater penetrates the subsurface layer of salt amid receding waters creating a vacuum that eventually causes the ground to collapse levee explained at the beginning of this ongoing problem ion getty resident and geologist eli raz had predicted that many more sinkholes would appear the upsetting prospect was not well received by locals who argued that raz's predictions would destroy the region's tourism industry but not doing anything about it has made that inevitable thanks for watching now we have to watch out for sinkholes too be very careful where you step remember to subscribe if you haven't already and i'll see you next time bye

Channel: Origins Explained

Views: 30,979

Rating: 4.8746209 out of 5

Keywords: sinkholes, largest sinkholes, biggest sinkholes, devastating sinkholes, natural disasters, natural events, bayou corne, natural disaster, florida sinkhole, world news, holes, landslides, nature, events, devastating, biggest, earth, world, largest, top five sinkholes, top 5 largest sinkholes, sinkhole, disaster, swallowing the earth, origins explained, top 10

Id: OYOMXNjMbKs

Length: 14min 51sec (891 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 11 2020