Tokyo (AFP) - A giant sinkhole appeared in the middle of a busy Japanese city on Tuesday, swallowing part of a five-lane street near the main railway station.
The gaping hole, around 20 metres (66 feet) by 15, exposed support columns of nearby buildings at a traffic intersection in the southern city of Fukuoka, prompting fears of further collapses.
TV footage showed two separate holes steadily expanding as they sucked in asphalt and soil in front of the city's Hakata Station, some time after 5am (2000 GMT Monday) .... https://au.news.yahoo.com
Two people were rescued from a giant sinkhole that opened up in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, while two more remain missing.
What started out as a crack in the road following heavy rain on Monday night, opened up into a small hole shortly after, before swallowing up a grass verge beside it and then pulling in some of the surrounding pavements.
A number of pedestrians stood beside the hole to take photos of it as it expanded .... https://www.rt.com
“We have all been outside watching it all day and it has just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger,” Lynn said. “It is terrible, we just don't know what to think – we have had a lot of people looking and seeing what they are going to do.”
The couple called Queensland Urban Utilities, as they assumed it was a result of pipe works or underground water, the Brisbane Times reports. Utilities staff inspected the hole and found it wasn’t related to pipes .... https://www.rt.com
A huge abyss is gradually widening, and sucking in more holiday homes as the earth collapses. It looks as if a meteorite has struck from outer space, but in fact the crater lies above a collapsing potash mine.
In the Perm region of the Urals, the crater started caving in at the end of 2014 and when it was first reported its dimensions on the surface were a modest 20 x 30 metres.
By April this year, the Solikamsk hole's surface measurements were 58 by 87 metres. Now - five months later - it measures 122 by 125 metres and is still enlarging, as it threatens new dachas - holiday homes - and forest. The crater, visible from space, is believed to be more than 75 metres deep .... http://siberiantimes.com
A massive sinkhole in Florida, which had been filled in, has opened up again -- bringing back nightmarish memories of when it swallowed a man two years ago.
In February 2013, the sinkhole first formed under Jeff Bush's bedroom in the town of Seffner as he turned in for the night. He screamed out for help to his brother Jeremy, who ran into the bedroom to see that Bush and all his furnishings had vanished into the earth.
Jeff Bush's remains were never recovered.
On Wednesday, the sinkhole -- about 20 feet in diameter -- opened up again the Tampa suburb .... http://edition.cnn.com
GUANGZHOU, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- One person was killed after an inter-city railway construction site collapsed on Thursday in south China's Dongguan City, Guangdong Province.
The cave-in was in Changpingdadao Street in Changping Township and covered an area of more than 300 quare meters. The victim was a construction worker who was working underground, the township government said.
More than 200 residents in nearby apartment buildings were evacuated.
The site has been cordoned off. Further investigation is underway .... http://news.xinhuanet.com
A massive sinkhole has swallowed up an intersection in Brooklyn, New York, snarling up traffic and causing water and gas outages to nearby buildings. Local residents are already joking about turning it into a rent-controlled apartment.
Dramatic images show the gaping hole in the corner of 64th Street and 5th Avenue, located just a short block away from the I-278, also known as the Gowanus Expressway, in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood.
The crater appeared shortly after 7:00am on Tuesday. There were no injuries.
“There were cars on it just minutes before,” Frank Bowman, whose rooftop surveillance camera captured the cave-in, told WCBS radio. “There was no warning, this thing just happened quick.” .... http://www.rt.com/usa
The mysterious hole-turned-lake in Siberia’s Yamal peninsula has expanded to 50 meters in depth, Russian scientists said. Researchers have been puzzled by its origins saying it was likely caused by gas explosions.
The giant sinkhole located not far from Gazprom’s Bovanenkovo gas field in Russia’s northern Yamal Peninsula has been expanding, scientists said as cited by Yamal region TV. The researchers also discovered additional smaller craters appearing around it, the media said. The whole area is within Russia’s key strategic oil and gas region – the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
The crater, discovered last year, has been gradually filling up with water and turning into a lake. Over the past winter and spring the water level in the crater has risen by 10 meters and it will continue to rise, scientists said, according to the government website of the Yamal-Nenetsky region .... http://rt.com
A Denver-area policeman had that sinking feeling before he even knew what hit him.
Then, Sgt. Greg Miller realized the street had opened up and his SUV was swallowed whole by a massive sinkhole. One of the car's airbags had deployed, there was a cloud of dust and water began rushing into the hole .... http://www.nydailynews.com
Residents of Konya Province in southern Turkey have spoken of their terror when a giant sinkhole suddenly appeared in a local field.
“We are very afraid (for) our lives. It is luck that no one fell into it,” said one local farmer.
Measuring 10 metres wide and 90 metres deep, the crater is thought to have formed in the space of 24 hours.
No one was injured as a result of the ground caving in .... http://www.euronews.com
Spanning 100 metres across and some 60 metres deep, this gigantic hole could be a meteor crater.
But it's understood to have been caused by something far closer to home – humble salt.
Terrified residents fear their homes will soon vanish after it suddenly opened up in their Ukrainian village, reportedly swallowing seven houses in the process.
Now they are demanding the government act to either stop the hole getting even bigger or move them to a new, safer location .... http://www.dailymail.co.uk
A fresh giant crater has appeared in Siberia's Novokuznetsk region. Measuring 20 meters in diameter and up to 30 meters in depth, the hole is unnerving the local population, who fear the next one might swallow their homes.
The mysterious sinkhole was first spotted by Rinat Sharifullin, a local man whose house is a mere 100 meters away from where it emerged. He blames the sagging of earth into abandoned mine tunnels snaking beneath the ground in the area.
Whatever the cause, such craters always appear in groups, says professor Vasily Bogoyavlensky from the Moscow State University of Oil and Gas. "I would compare them to mushrooms. If you find one, you will most likely discover a dozen more nearby."
Geologists say similar craters in the past could have caused the formation of a number of lakes in Siberia's Yamal peninsula .... http://rt.com
Russian scientists have now discovered seven giant craters in remote Siberia, a geologist told AFP on Thursday, adding that the mysterious phenomenon was believed to be linked to climate change.
The discovery of an enormous chasm in a far northern region known to locals as "the end of the world" in July last year prompted speculation it had been caused by a meteorite or even aliens.
A YouTube video of the hole went viral and a group of scientists was despatched to investigate.
"We have just learnt that in Yakutia, new information has emerged about a giant crater one kilometre (0.6 miles) in diameter," the deputy director of the Oil and Gas Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vasily Bogoyavlensky, told AFP.
He said this brought to seven the number of reported pits.
"Footage allows us to identify minimum seven craters, but in fact there are plenty more," he said .... http://news.yahoo.com
In the middle of last summer came news of a bizarre occurrence no one could explain. Seemingly out of nowhere, a massive crater appeared in one of the planet's most inhospitable lands. Early estimates said the crater, nestled in a land called "the ends of the Earth" where temperatures can sink far below zero, yawned nearly 30 metres in diameter.
Now, however, as The Sydney Morning herald reports, researchers fear there are more craters than anyone knew — and the repercussions could be huge .... http://www.zerohedge.com
