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.'"

Comments

Moving the country?

[MalHavoc]

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.

Re:Moving the country?

[nightfire-unique]

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.

Re:Moving the country?

[couchslug]

"Thirteen and two million resindents, respectively...either way, your idea is awful. "

It isn't "awful" if it's necessary, then it's just "unfortunate".

The intelligent thing to do is (gradually) either relocate (much work to replicate systems) or DISPERSE the city elsewhere. Efficient dispersal of population is likely the lowest-impact way to deal with the disaster.

Re:Moving the country?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect, in practice, there will be a certain amount of moving going on(of the "run screaming" variety, if not a formal program.)

The tricky thing is, though, that moving large numbers of people is actually pretty difficult, and has a history of not working out very well, especially in areas where resources are slim, or governance isn't brilliant.. Moving slightly under 20K people, as part of a formal program, in a country with a GDP per capita of ~$36,000, is a pain in the ass, and won't be cheap; but is doable.

Moving 2 million(or even a substantial fraction thereof), in a country with a GDP per capita of ~$2,700 could get ugly. Like "squalid children with big eyes huddled under sodden tarps in disease-infested refugee camps" ugly.

While the occasional sinkhole is scary and dramatic, the human costs of staying put and paying closer attention to hydrology, and possibly dealing with the occasional sinkhole incident, are almost certainly lower than trying to move on that scale.

Re:Moving the country?

[Cheeko]

Having just gotten back from Guatemala, you already see a fair amount of the "squalid children with big eyes huddled under sodden tarps" even if not in the urban centers.

The country has some pretty significant poverty/living condition issues and the city is one of the BETTER parts of the country. Any sort of relocation project is entirely impossible given the finances and state of the nation.

The issue really is that any sort of infrastructure project might be equally crippled. This in many ways reminds of the situation in Haiti prior to the earthquake. They know they are in a hazardus environment, but the lack of ability to implement anything in terms of building code or infrastructure programs means that prayer and luck are the only options.

Re:Moving the country?

[Bakkster]

He said the intelligent thing to do, not realistic.

It would be the 'best' thing, but as it concerns humans, which are emotional and irrational beings, it's highly unlikely.

Re:Moving the country?

[tlhIngan]

I dunno why, but I suddenly pictured a bunch of embarrassed Swedes whistling as they quietly move the town over a few hundred meters.

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.

Re:Moving the country?

[onkelonkel]

"Better to disperse them back to subsistence farming; at least that's SOME living, rather than NO living."

This may not be true. I remember learning about England during the Industrial Revolution. Hordes of people flocking into the cities to work endless hours for low wages in dirty, dangerous mills. Somebody asked "If it was so horrible for the factory workers why did they all go there" The teacher made the point that as bad as the factories were, it was still better than farming. Farmers worked as many hours or more than the factory workers, and the conditions were often just as dangerous. On top of that weather, disease and pests could wipe out your crops and leave you with nothing and you would starve. In the mills, as long as you worked you could feed your family; on the farms you could work hard and still starve.

Re:Moving the country?

[Dogtanian]

I remember learning about England during the Industrial Revolution. [..] Somebody asked "If it was so horrible for the factory workers why did they all go there" The teacher made the point that as bad as the factories were, it was still better than farming.

It's not quite as simple as that. In the case of England during the Industrial Revolution, the inclosures act(s) effectively made it more difficult for people to earn a living on the land as they had done previously, and increasingly forced them to move into cities to undertake industrial work. The Marxist interpretation is that the government was effectively legislating people off the land and into the capitalist system.

I'm not saying that working on the land was an easy option by any means- only that saying that people left it entirely of their own free will is misleading.

Some may argue the same thing happens nowadays when people leave farming to take up city-based factory work in third world countries- there is an active external force/agenda (e.g. those international bodies wishing to force through capitalist/free-market reforms by tying aid or loans to them) coercing people into the industrial option by making the old way of doing things unworkable.

Re:Look on the bright side

[Barrinmw]

This was the perfect opportunity for him to make a pun. "There is an excellent potential for this to happen again. It could happen almost anywhere in the city.' Should have been "I have a sinking feeling that this could happen again."

Errr... yeah

[DavidR1991]

The article's title (Don't call it a sinkhole) is certainly on the money. I was shocked. If you haven't read/looked at the article, do. I was expecting, you know, a little crater thing or something. This is far, far beyond that. It is literally a massive cylindrical hole. It's amazing.

Re:Errr... yeah

[Tapewolf]

I've seen the picture before, but only by clicking on the one in the article to get a higher-res version do I finally think I understand what it is I'm seeing.

See, there was this darker bit at the bottom that you couldn't make out properly, I figured it was an artifact of the image, or a heap of black stuff at the bottom. When it first went around the office, people were saying 'Why can't you see the bits of the building at the bottom?'
Now that I can see it more clearly, it seems to me that the brown bit is the crust, and the black bit is a hole into a fuck-off big cavern, which could quite easily be as big as the rest of the picture, if not much of the town.

Re:Errr... yeah

[Stormy Dragon]

So this city has a literal real estate bubble?

Division by Zero

[Drakkenmensch]

Don't do it.

Flikr

[Anonymous Coward]

The full size version of that photo thats always on the front page of this story is on flikr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gobiernodeguatemala/4657053554/sizes/l/

Amazing, it looks like something out of a scifi movie. Did the death star missfire?

Re:Why the wait?

[Nadaka]

RTFA?

In 2007, a similar hole opened after a sewage pipe broke pipe just a few blocks from this weekend's disaster. Bonis was part of a team of geologists and engineers brought in to investigate and advise officials on what went wrong.

"Our recommendation was that this could happen again," he recalled. "When you have water flowing from storm water runoff, a sewage pipe, or any kind of strong flow, it eats away at the loose material. We don't know how long it has to go on before it collapses. But once it starts collapsing, God help us."

Centralia

[adeft]

Here in PA we have a town called Centralia that is over an active burning coal fire. I believe it has been burning for over 50 years. The town was considered unfit to live in and everyone was encouraged to move. There are still some stragglers remaining, I believe the population is about 5 people. You can still walk/drive through it, but at your own risk as sink holes are a huge issue. If you can ignore the rediculous pop-ups pictures of what a zombie apocalypse might look like here

It's not a sinkhole

[GungaDan]

Goatse recently moved to Guatemala City.

Hey wait, idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Any chance a large amount of oil would fix things?

Well this is unusual

[imgod2u]

My ex made a /. headline!

Some good pictures

[InsprdInsnty]

Here's some interesting photos of the area http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/a_rough_week_for_guatemala.html

Re:Some good pictures

[ColdWetDog]

You know, Guatemala covers the geographic location of the ancient Mayan civilization.

It's getting pretty close to 2012.

Just sayin ...

Re:Look on the bright side

[Maxo-Texas]

The city could have a hole lot of problems.

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[thijsh]

I think you are confusing it with this... look at the photo, if any feature on the earth ever looked like a gate to hell it's this fiery pit. :-)

This is Guatemala City!

[dorkinson]

A group of Iranian visitors inspecting the hole claimed that it was "madness", but they were quickly dealt with.

Re:sinkhole

[MBGMorden]

Actually 'sinked' is more proper/correct, though I no it sounds weird.

You "no" it sounds weird?

Somehow I don't think I'll be taking advice on what's more proper/correct from you.

For what it's worth, a quick glance at Dictionary.com shows no results at all for sinked (and Firefox's spell checker just red-lined it when I typed it), while it clearly identifies sunk as the proper past tense of sink.

When I started here all there was was ash!

[RevWaldo]

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!

.

Re:Look on the bright side

[matrim99]

After seeing that amazing picture and realizing that it wasn't a really bad Photoshop job, I almost expected the headline to read "Higgs Boson Found!".

Picture of the bottom

[Frederic54]

There is a couple of pictures of the "sinkhole" there, and especially one of the bottom, it seems there is a big cave

http://www.csmonitor.com/CSM-Photo-Galleries/In-Pictures/Guatemala-sinkhole/(photo)/2

From Guatemalan point of view

[denn1s]

I'm from Guatemala. This is actually the second (and smaller) sinkhole. The first one was located not too far away, http://conred.gob.gt/galeria/fotos/fotografias-de-incidentes-1969-2009/640x480Hundimiento%20Barrio%20San%20Antonio%20Zona%206%20102%202007.JPG/image_preview and happened last year. However, earth just doesn't open, first huge rumbling sounds begin, then, after a couple of weeks, earth opens. Also, we have already pinpointed possible new sinkhole locations, one which is barely 200mts from the last one. Now is just a matter of time to see if the government does something, which is unlikely.

Re:sinkhole

[AthanasiusKircher]

First of all...whoosh.

I don't get the joke here either. Are you claiming "sinked" is correct or not? Did you intend to say "no" instead of "know" or not? I think you need [sarcasm] tags.

Secondly, I would recommend a real (e.g. physical), unabridged dictionary. However if you want you want to use an online dictionary I would recommend thefreedictionary.com as it is far more expansive on pronunciation.

Actually, the best unabridged dictionary in the world is the Oxford English Dictionary, which is available online (for a subscription fee, though). It's better than the paper form of the OED, which isn't updated as frequently.

The -ed in past tense verbs becomes more common in ares that have been speaking English for a longer period of time. For example, in the Southern US (where they have been speaking English for a long time), and in England (where English was invented) many verbs are in the -ed format: swimmed, runned, stinged, waked, sinked, etc.

I'm going to have to call BS on this part. The OED is the standard authority of English in England. Under "sink" it lists:

Pa. tense sank, sunk. pa. pple. sunk, sunken.

The OED is notorious for being a bit permissive in such matters, being a fairly descriptive dictionary. If "sinked" were a common form, it would be listed as such. Furthermore, even in the historical list of forms, "sinked" comes up short:

pa. tense. {alpha}. sing. 1, 3-4 sanc, 5 sanck; 4-5 sanke, 4-5, 8- sank. pl. 5-7 sanke, 6 sancke, 9- sank. {beta}. sing. 1 sonc, 4 sonk. pl. 3-5 sonken, 5-6 sonke, 6 soncke, 6-7 soonke. {gamma}. pl. 1 suncon, 3 sunken, sunke, 5 sunkyn; also sing. 6 suncke, 6-7 sunke, sunck, 7- sunk. {delta}. 5 synked, 7 (9 dial.) sinked. pa. pple. {alpha}. 1 suncen, 3 i-sunken (Orm. sunnkenn), 3- sunken, 4 sunkin, -yn, 6 suncken; 4-7 sunke, 6-7 sunck(e, 7- sunk. {beta}. 4-5 sonken, 5 sonkyn; Sc. 5 sonkine, -yne, 6 sonkin; 4 i-sonke, 6 son(c)ke, soonke, 7 soonk. {gamma}. 9 sank, dial. sinken.

Here "sinked" is only listed as a relatively minor historical dialect form, hardly what is "proper/correct" as you claim. Moreover, it doesn't appear to be that historically important, and certainly not the most common "old" form.

Re:sinkhole

[Gulthek]

Hey now, you can't "whoosh" and argue at the same time. You either agree to pretend that your original post was a joke (whoosh) or you can continue to futilely argue.

Luckily I happen to work at an institution with a subscription to the OED. Let's look shall we?

c1250 Gen. & Ex. 3775 Alle he sunken e ere wi-in, Wi wifes, and childre, and hines-kin.

Yeah, that 1250 is the year the quote was written. This usage is also specifically referring to sunk into the earth.

All told, their examples for the word "sink" have 55 uses of the work sunk and 0 of the word sinked. Sinked is listed as an obscure, colloquial use though.

The argument for centuries has been between sank and sunk, sinked is right out.

http://www.grammarphobia.com/blogger-blog/2010/01/honey-i-sunk-boat.html

Re:Piping Feature? No...

[laejoh]

Naa, just a lame knockoff of goatse!