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Giant Guatemalan 'Sinkhole' Is Worse Than We Thought
reillymj writes "Despite hundreds of media reports to the contrary, Sam Bonis, a geologist whose life work has been studying Guatemalan geology, has plainly said that the dramatic 'sinkhole' in Guatemala City that opened over the weekend isn't a sinkhole at all. Instead, he called it a 'piping feature' and warned that because the country's capital city sits on a pile of loose volcanic ash, the over one million people living on top of the pile are in danger. 'I'd hate to have to be in the government right now,' Bonis, who worked for the Guatemalan government's Instituto Geografico Nacional for 16 years, said. 'There is an excellent potential for this to happen again. It could happen almost anywhere in the city.'"
Looks like the city nearly doubled its surface area!
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Don't do it.
Just put giant parachutes on all the buildings.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It's the Rise of the Silver Surfer!!!
Goatse recently moved to Guatemala City.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Any chance a large amount of oil would fix things?
Probably not even remotely possible due to its size, but a similar problem seems to have been created in Kiruna, in Sweden. The town sits on top of the world's largest iron ore mine, and the mine has created a large cavity under the town. They are moving everything, in some cases, literally brick by brick. There's a neat article about it in this month's National Geographic.
I dunno why, but I suddenly pictured a bunch of embarrassed Swedes whistling as they quietly move the town over a few hundred meters.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
That huge gaping hole that swallowed your neighbor? That's not a geological bug, it's a 'feature'.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
I think we have just found the entrance to middle earth. Does anyone see any dinosaurs or dragons down there?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
My ex made a /. headline!
Lets fill this thing with our corrupt career politicians and lawyers, I know the hole isn't big enough - but its a start!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
Actually 'sinked' is more proper/correct, though I no it sounds weird. Kind of like the last line in To Kill a Mockingbird: "[Atticus] would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning"
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
A group of Iranian visitors inspecting the hole claimed that it was "madness", but they were quickly dealt with.
That just looks like a lame knockoff of Yellowstone.
Get a web developer
Probably not even remotely possible due to its size, but a similar problem seems to have been created in Kiruna, in Sweden. The town sits on top of the world's largest iron ore mine, and the mine has created a large cavity under the town. They are moving everything, in some cases, literally brick by brick.
That sounds like an aweful lot of bork.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
All the other mayors said I was daft to build a city on top of ash, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em!
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Odd that posting a RTFA comment is now meritorious enough to get someone an insightful mod. :/
And a bunch of confused tourists wondering why their GPSes are off so badly - the map is right, but it says the town is somewhere else.
You know, Guatemala covers the geographic location of the ancient Mayan civilization.
...
It's getting pretty close to 2012.
Just sayin
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Turkmenistan? Wikipedia is making up country names now?
Wikipedia may have made up Uzbekistan, but not Turkmenistan. That was made up by Burat or somebody.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I thought the same thing: "looks `shopped".
Good question as to why nobody's dropped a camera down the hole yet.
My theory is that most people in Guatemala are too poor to afford risking both a decent video camera and the crane/rigging equipment required to get a picture from a significant depth inside. Also they might be uneasy about the potentially unstable sides of the freaking huge hole in the ground and the certainly fatal drop if those walls collapsed. But that's just a guess...
That's not a sinkhole, that's a Emergence Hole. Someone better toss a grenade in there ASAP before the Locusts Horde starts streaming out!
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
like anyone cares about someones dramatic loss of empathy.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Naa, just a lame knockoff of goatse!
When I see that picture, I am imagining a Guatemalan who just divided by zero and jumps into the hole exclaiming in their best Buzz Light-year voice: "To infinity and beyooooond!!!"
That is both very funny, well related, and yet more disgusting that I really want to process.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
He was getting too much spam on the Balrog account, it's a feature, not a bug.
You can't handle the truth.
So this city has a literal real estate bubble?