Florida sinkholes

Oh, sinkholes!

I thought you said stinkholes - I was going to tell you about a few I had been in down there ... the women were cheaper than the beer. :rolleyes:
 
Sinkhole in the U.K.


A family has told how their daughter could have been "buried alive" if she had been in her car when a 30ft (9m) sinkhole swallowed it up.
Nobody was inside the VW Lupo when the ground on Main Road in Walter's Ash, High Wycombe, gave way on Sunday.
Liz Conran, who lives in the house with her husband Phil, said the car belonged to their daughter Zoe.
"She was in absolute hysterics," she said. "It didn't dawn on us what had happened until after about an hour."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-26014076
 
Sinkholes are a way of life here mostly in Central Florida, very hard to predict when the next one will be and We don't get those that much.
They are like our hurricanes,tornadoes. Very unpredictable.
 
Interesting programme on them tonight that I have just seen.
seemed to be Central Florida that was sinkhole alley.
 
Vivjen said:
Interesting programme on them tonight that I have just seen.
seemed to be Central Florida that was sinkhole alley.
Click to expand...

I had read an article a while ago that talked about Florida's sinkholes being due to the consumption and subsequent elimination of the small amount of groundwater in the state, thus making the limestone infrastructure more fragile.

But sinkholes as a general phenomena are not limited to Florida - here in Pennsylvania we have had hundreds of them over the years, due mainly to the long cola-mining history of the area. We call them "subsidences".

According to the U.s. Geological Survey sinkhole damages are the highest in Florida, Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania.

map-of-us-sinkhole-2.jpg
 
According to this guy; sinkholes are basically caused by the clay deposited over the limestone giving way; by being too wet or too dry.
this is after the limestone has gradually been dissolved ...
subsidence tends to be caused by mine workings which weren't properly mapped, and give way when dug into, or disturbed.

As I understand it.....
 
Vivjen said:
According to this guy; sinkholes are basically caused by the clay deposited over the limestone giving way; by being too wet or too dry.
this is after the limestone has gradually been dissolved ...
subsidence tends to be caused by mine workings which weren't properly mapped, and give way when dug into, or disturbed.

As I understand it.....
Click to expand...

Very true, but the end result is the same - the earth swallowing up more people than all the Kardashians combined.

There are also the other states to be considered, most of which have something called "karst", which is any of several soluble rocks (limestone, dolomite and gypsum) which dissolves and forms subterranean caves and "holes".
 
Davey Jones said:
Sinkholes are a way of life here mostly in Central Florida, very hard to predict when the next one will be and We don't get those that much.
They are like our hurricanes,tornadoes. Very unpredictable.
Click to expand...

Hey Davey, I read this on About.com about Florida:
Florida was known as the "Lightning Capital of the World" (NASA recently released a study that pegged Rwanda, Africa as the true lightning capital of the world.) With more deaths and injuries than all other states combined, (1523 Deaths and Injuries) Florida ranks as the #1 target for public safety and lightning awareness campaigns.

And there was this on the Palm Beach County, Florida's web site:
Central Florida is the most lightning prone area in the United States with about 90 thunderstorm days a year. Because of this, Florida has more lightning deaths than any other state. In fact, lightning kills more people in Florida than all other weather hazards combined.

So we've got sink holes, mosquitoes, tornadoes, hurricanes & lightening. Guess we can't say living in central Florida is boring. :danger:
 
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