Sinkhole Guatemala – The giant hole appeared and created in the center of Guatemala city, at least three person was killed and another missing after a three-level building engulfed by giant Sink hole in Guatemala City.
Guatemala’s sink hole appears since 23 February 2007, when the town was hit by Agatha Hurricane , high winds, heavy rains and landslides , and until the year 2010 today the Sink-hole still being the world’s attention and research geological scientists..
A geophysics engineer at the National Disaster Management Agency, David Monterroso, said, that buildings within 100 metres of the hole had been evacuated while his team evaluated the solidity of the ground with radar. “It’s evident that we need a full revision of the drainage system,” he said. Monterroso said, underground sewage leaks could have created a cavity that collapsed when the weight of the porous volcanic ground above increased during heavy rain. Ash from a nearby volcano that erupted a few days before may also have put extra pressure on the drains.
David added that once the hole had dried out experts would go down to analyse the soil.
Pablo Taracena was watching television at home next door to the doomed factory when he realised something was wrong. “The feeling was similar to the one you get when a lift stops suddenly, only much stronger,” he told El Periodico newspaper. “There was a lot of noise and shaking, and then I got out of the house.”
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Sinkhole Guatemala
Introduction to How Sinkholes Work [source: science.howstuffworks.com] Maybe you’ve seen one on the news: a giant yawning hole in the road, swallowing an unfortunate car that was in the wrong place when the Earth opened up without warning. Or maybe you were on vacation in Mexico and saw one of the country’s beautiful cenotes, or water-filled pools, surrounded by verdant green. Both of these geological features are sinkholes, formations that are much more than holes in the ground. Though many are less than 100 feet (30 meters) deep, sinkholes can look like ponds, cover hundreds of miles or fit discreetly in your backyard .
Also called sinks, sinkholes owe much to water. A sinkhole usually forms by erosion caused by frequent exposure to water. It comes down to the type of rocks underlying the soil (as opposed to the soil above called the overburden). Most sinkholes occur in areas where the bedrock is formed from soft minerals and rocks like salt, gypsum, limestone, dolomite or others belonging to the evaporate or carbonate classes of rocks.
Sinkholes typically develop slowly as bedrock is whittled away by water turned acidic from absorbing carbon dioxide and interacting with plants. Rainwater obviously plays a role, but unseen water also matters. As the acidic water dissolves rock, it carves out conduits, or underground passages, for water. These conduits in turn help to develop underground basins known as recharge areas. Recharge areas contribute to the formation of sinkholes as water flowing to and from them and into the subsurface (the earth overhead) erodes bedrock. When water floods a developing sinkhole, some of the topsoil and other material can be caught in the conduits, further trapping water and limiting its ability to flow outward.
A lack of water can contribute to sinkholes, too. In some underground cavities, water may actually be holding up a thin overhang of earth. If that water level falls, the overhang has no support and collapses.
Sinkholes appear all over the United States. Florida, with its frequent rains and marshy terrain, is usually identified with sinkholes, but they’re also prominent in Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas [source: USGS]. They generally develop in karst regions, a type of terrain known for soft bedrock [source: Southwest Florida Water Management District]. The U.S. Geological Service describes karsts as having many water elements, such as springs, underground streams, caves and, of course, sinkholes.
Very amazing and horrifying, to see the giant hole very big and deep appears in downtown..
A geophysics engineer at the National Disaster Management Agency, David Monterroso, said, that buildings within 100 metres of the hole had been evacuated while his team evaluated the solidity of the ground with radar. “It’s evident that we need a full revision of the drainage system,” he said.