Video of Car Swallowed by Sinkhole Related to Tunneling in Cairo, Egypt

A colleague of mine sent me an amazing video of a culvert failure and subsequent road collapse in Freeport Maine during a storm. The culvert was unable to accommodate the high volume of water, and it was backing up behind the roadway embankment like a dam, and spilling out onto the roadway. In a span of about 3 minutes, the entire section of road collapsed and was washed downstream. I don’t know the exact date the video was taken, but it appears to be in August of 2008. Click through for the video.

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The City of Vancouver is suing a developer, excavation contractor and their consulting engineer for the costs of repairs, overtime for city employees and lost revenue from parking meters etc stemming from an apparent failure of a shoring system that formed a 30-meter sinkhole. No mention of the developer’s name or the engineer, but the contractor was Matcon Excavation and Shoring. The site will be the future home of high-rise condominiums…if the City lifts it’s stop work order.

The failure of the shoring caused a break inf a 20-cm water main ultimately flooding the site. It also necessitated the closure of the adjacent street. Of course this invites the whole chicken or the egg scenario. The defendants will probably argue that the water line failed first causing the failure of the shoring, but of course the City Engineer, Tom Timm was not shy about fingering the shoring as being deficient.

"It’s some kind of a failure of the shoring system . . . either a design issue or the way it was put in place."

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The Florida Geological Survey probably deals with more sinkholes than most agencies. The most frequent geologic cause of sinkholes is dissolution of limestone and other soluble rocks and the collapse of the soil cover over […]