A 40 foot diameter sinkhole 30 feet deep opened up beneath the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and swallowed 8 of the Corvettes on display. The museum’s security company alerted the staff members that the motion sensors had gone off at about 5:40 am on February 12 in the ‘SkyDome’ portion of the museum, separate from the main building. The museum called in a structural engineer and some Karst sinkhole experts who used a remote controlled helicopter to get photos and video inside the sinkhole. See those videos below. The main museum will be open as usual tomorrow, but the SkyDome will be closed indefinitely. [Source: NYTimes.com. Image: National Corvette Museum via NYTimes.com]
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Sinkhole in Florida opens overnight, swallows and kills man
Maitland Sinkhole Stabilization Project – Central Florida
A massive sinkhole more than 300-ft in diameter and with depths to bedrock of up to 350-ft is located under a future I-4 traffic interchange in an Orlando suburb. A massive $9 million stabilization project is underway to prepare the site for the eventual TI construction. The size of the Maitland Sinkhole is on par with the largest sinkholes to form in central Florida in recent times. There is not a void present, instead it is infilled with a compressible sand deposit. (Image from FDOT)
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It seems strange, (i) were sink holes not expected in and around the site of construction?
(ii) No geological-geotechniacal investigations prior to construction?
thanks
This is my worst nightmare! Being trapped in your car while you and other cars are just sinking into a hole! Cars are super dangerous anyway, and this kind of thing really brings that to light.
Still, it’s really fascinating how powerful mother nature is: being able to swallow 8 cars at once is very, very powerful.