Sinkhole and cow news

Sent in by Derek R from CTV News:

Two people fell into a hole that opened up in the sidewalk outside a Kitchener department store Monday. It’s not clear what caused the hole to form outside the Sears store in Fairview Park Mall around 2 p.m.

Deanna Haddad was near the front of the store when she saw a woman try to walk into the building: “As she stepped in closer, she fell into a hole,” she said, “I don’t know exactly how deep the hole was, but she was up all the way up to her neck.”

There's your clue, right there.

From The Guardian:

A section of road in the centre of the Japanese city of Fukuoka has reopened just days after a sinkhole opened up outside a busy railway station and threatened to topple nearby buildings.

In a typical demonstration of Japanese workmanship and efficiency, workers toiled around the clocks and had practically filled in the section of road in just two days, according to local media. The road reopened to traffic and pedestrians early on Tuesday after local officials declared the repaired stretch safe.

Meanwhile, Up North:

Emergency planners are discussing when residents can return 'ome after a large sinkhole opened in North Yorkshire.

Twelve homes were evacuated on Wednesday after t'ole opened in t'back gardens of Magdalen's Road in Ripon.

Ian Spiers, emergency planning manager for Harrogate Borough Council, said Yorkshire Water were deciding how to reopen t'sewers so t'residents could return 'ome.

The worst kind of subsidence is an earthquake of course, among all the human misery there's this from MSN.com emailed in by James Higham:

Three New Zealand cows looked like they could use a little help on Monday after an earthquake triggered landslides all around them and left them stranded on a small island of grass.

Video taken by Newshub news service from a helicopter near the small town of Kaikoura shows two adult cattle and a calf stuck on a chunk of land in a paddock that had been ripped apart in Monday’s magnitude-7.8 quake. The patch of grass was surrounded by deep ravines of collapsed earth, trapping the animals where they stood.

Sinkhole of the week

From The Daily Mail:

A 100ft-wide sinkhole that is so deep the bottom cannot be seen at one end has appeared overnight just yards from a farmer's house in County Durham.

John Hensby, 71, says his partner Sam Hillyard, 39, first discovered the hole on Thursday morning, adding that it has been growing ever since. And Mr Hensby now fears that heavy rain forecast for the coming days could be about to make the situation even worse...

Sinkhole News

From The Daily Mail:

It's getting bigger! Massive sinkhole in Florida neighbourhood DOUBLES in size as it becomes tourist attraction

* Crowds are turning up in Spring Hill, Florida, just to peer into the hole
* One resident joked about putting up a lemonade stand to entice visitors
* However it is encroaching on their homes and residents don't feel safe

Giant Sinkholes* Of The Week

From The Daily Mail:

Parts of a house including a bedroom and an outdoor patio have been swallowed by a large sinkhole that opened just hours before a second appeared on the same street.

The first hole, which gave way about 4pm on Tuesday, engulfed a corner of a three-storey Swansea home near Newcastle in the NSW Hunter Valley sending a section of a spare bedroom sliding up to 15 metres below the earth's surface.

Tables and chairs on an outdoor patio where also swallowed by the large cavity, which opened above a disused mine shaft that operated in the area until it was abandoned in 1953.

* OK, these weren't true sinkholes at all but collapsed mine shafts, not that that's much consolation to those affected.

Sinkhole Of The Week

From The Daily Mail:

"British sinkhole spike prompts warning"

Woo hoo, everybody's into sink holes now, they've even finally got round to blaming them on Climate Change:

Britain is likely to face the strange and disturbing threat of more sinkholes opening up in the weeks and months ahead.

The warning comes from the British Geological Survey (BGS), which has been studying a recent spate of collapses across the country. In a typical year, geologists would expect to see one or two sinkholes appearing, but this month's tally has reached six so far...

Some rocks host networks of natural caverns while others are riddled with old mineshafts. Depending on the soil and rock suspended above of these cavities, a sudden incursion of water from heavy rainstorms can lead to massive strains and, ultimately, to collapse.

Sink holes go mainstream

The Daily Mail has done a round up of some recent sinkhole stories, with the following splendid headline-cum-opening paragraph:

Terrifying holes that are opening up all over Britain: They're appearing at FIVE TIMES their normal rate and further bad weather could mean we haven't seen the last of them

"Hemel Hempstead to be evacuated"

Sink holes go mainstream

VFTS emailed in this one from The Daily Mail, with the comment "Sink hole swallows car… which was dangerously close to (unknown value) house"
:

My worry here is that sink holes are going mainstream. The BBC included a video and if you look at the 'related video/audio' section to the right, they've got loads more sink hole-related videos and underneath the article are more links to articles about sink holes.

It's only a matter of time before the BBC starts blaming sink holes on climate change and then the fun will go out of it completely. Besides cow attacks, my specialist topic is going to be "car attacks house" stories, that's suitably unsettling and they'll never blame that on climate change.

More sinkhole news

Spotted by JuliaM in The Daily Mail, video from YouTube, obviously:

Giant Sinkhole Of The Month

Spotted by JuliaM and Pub Curmudgeon in The Daily Mail and at the BBC respectively:

"100 foot wide sinkhole swallows man"

This one was too late to make it into this morning's round-up of Daily Mail articles about random attacks by inanimate objects (and a deer):

A man is presumed dead after he was swallowed by a 100-foot-wide sinkhole that opened up underneath his bedroom in Florida on Thursday night. Jeff Bush, 36, was heard screaming for his brother as he was sucked into the 50-foot-deep hole and became trapped in the rubble when his house in Brandon, near Tampa, collapsed.

The brother ran to Bush's room and frantically tried to save him, but it was too late. Hillsborough County Fire Rescue officials arrived at the home at 11 p.m. on Thursday and the first officer on the scene rescued the brother from the edge of the chasm.

All we need now is a cow attack and I think that's the full set.

Giant Sinkhole Of The Week

From The Daily Mail:

Giant Sinkhole Of The Week

From the BBC, the Great Western Canal, Halberton, Devon.

"Street cleaner falls through hole in the ground as pavement collapses"

From The Daily Mail:

Council worker Kelvin London was shocked when the earth gave way while he was cleaning the pavement in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk this morning. As big paving slabs gave way, the sweeper tipped on its side.

Mr London said: "It suddenly went down and tipped to one side. When I got my senses together I was in a big hole so I got out quick as it was a bit worrying."

The street cleaner managed to clamber out a side door, unharmed.

He must have had a nasty shock and everything, but that hole is nothing compared to the one which appeared in Guatamala.

"Sinkholes around the world"

I've been posting pictures of sink holes as and when I noticed them, and have now stumbled across this fantastic internet-based resource, which is a gallery of 31 of your favourite sinkholes.

Rumble In The Jungle At The Bus Stop

Spotted by Sean aka Vice Pilot in the Sheffield Star:

Cheryl Wall, from the Hallamshire Physiotherapy Clinic opposite, said: “There is a very big gap where the pavement has collapsed. It’s amazing no-one was standing at the bus stop at the time.”

A worker at The Rutland Hotel across the road said she had heard a rumbling noise before the pavement fell in and the wall collapsed at around 1.45pm yesterday. “It’s a biggish section of wall and the pavement next to it has just gone,” she said.

Giant Pothole Of The Week

From the Daily Mail:

"Pensioner's garden falls into river after torrential rain"

From The Metro:

Half of the garden fell 12metres (40ft) into the raging River Eden in Wetheral, Cumbria, including the shed and most of her patio. And she didn’t hear a thing. Mrs Howe, 72, who is a church verger, described what happened: ‘I was reaching to the kitchen sink for a knife and looked through the window – a big part of the garden had gone...As you can see, Mrs Howe's house is now teetering on the edge, and her insurance company is refusing to pay up (rightly or wrongly). Clearly, the value of the bricks and mortar has been destroyed, that's a net loss of wealth to humankind (whether she pays it or whether the insurance company finally caves in [sic] and pays), but what happens to the location value?

A plot directly overlooking a river usually has a much higher value than a plot further back (if we ignore the risk of the river bank collapsing again). The location value of her plot, seen vertically, is now zero, presumably, but assuming Mrs Howe's whole house is declared unsafe and demolished, what happens to the value of the plot behind it that previously had no 'riverside premium' but now does - hasn't the location value of that plot just jumped by the same amount as the location value of Mrs Howe's plot has fallen?

Giant Sinkhole Of The Week

From The Metro: "Sinkhole 20 [metres] wide appears overnight in garden":