Saturday, 23 August 2014

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...

7 comments:

Ian Hills said...

The sinkhole is caused by government debt, which of course is getting worse. Retiring Treasury stocks would make the hole fill up again, according to geologists.

A K Haart said...

Looks like coal.

Mark Wadsworth said...

IH, good theory.

AKH, it does, doesn't it? But if it's that close to the surface he ought to go in for open cast mining.

Derek said...

Yes, but just how much is his house worth? Enquiring minds need to know.

Mark Wadsworth said...

D, unusually for the Mail it doesn't say what his house is worth, the farm house is 80 yards from the hole. But even if it fell down, he's only losing the rebuild cost and not the land value - he's got plenty of acres on which to build a new one (having had a proper survey done first).

Pablo said...

Worabout this:
http://tinyurl.com/pcgsdpj
Not exactly a sink'ole, but impressive!

Derek said...

Yup, that's what I was getting at. It's weird that the DM provides house value for murders, suicides and other incidents where it's irrelevant but misses it out here where it might actually have some relevance.