hey everyone you know it's easy to be under the impression that the ground beneath our feet is solid but that's not the case the Earth is always shifting and changing sometimes leading to the creation of large sinkholes they can develop without warning and often wreak havoc in heavy populated areas so join me we're gonna travel around the globe to see 15 sinkholes that appeared out of nowhere number 15 the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky built in 1994 the National Corvette Museum which is in Bowling Green Kentucky houses one of the largest and most valuable collections of Chevrolet Corvettes in the world the vehicle which has been in production since 1953 is now built less than a quarter of a mile from the museum at the Bowling Green assembly plant and if you're a fan there's no better place to go to see how they've changed over the years the museum though made headlines around the world in February of 2014 not because of the array of rare vehicles on display but because of something that happened as a result of Kentucky's Limestone landscape early in the morning on the 12th the foundations Beneath The Sky Dome area of the museum had become weakened to such an extent that the weight of the building caused the Subterranean Cavern to collapse and a sinkhole formed caught on security camera eight of the extremely rare Corvettes as well as display stands and concrete slabs fell into the hole with the damage to the cars alone estimated to have been more than a million dollars to remaining 20 cars in the showroom were quickly taken to to a safe location and a retrieval effort began that surprisingly was actually able to salvage five of the cars that had fallen into the sinkhole within a matter of days with the others needing to be left there until the foundations could be reinforced the museum reopened for visitors just a day after the incident and there's now a brand new exhibit dedicated to the sinkhole where visitors are able to try their hand at virtually retrieving the cars that had fallen in luckily though the damaged vehicles have now all been restored to their former glory which is a testament to how sturdy and well-built those classic cars were number 14. Fukuoka Japan when sinkholes more potholes form in most places around the world it can take a frustratingly long time for them to be repaired so people can get back to their normal lives but an event that took place in Japan in early November 2016 proves it doesn't always have to be like this at around 5 a. m in downtown Fukuoka locals reported the power had gone out and they were hearing huge booming noises from outside looking out their Windows they saw that a giant sinkhole had opened up that had swallowed the entire width of a five-lane road by the time things had settled the hull was at least 65 feet deep and was full of debris-like traffic lights and it also exposed the foundations of the nearby buildings said by authorities to be unprecedented and later blamed on leaks that had been caused by nearby construction works on a subway line Fukuoka Airport suffered a power outage too as did 800 homes and the area was evacuated because of the concern of further holes opening up and because the risk of explosions possibly the most surprising aspect though was how quickly structural support was put in place and the way that the road had been completely fixed and reopened within a week workers filled in the hole with what they called special soil and despite an incident later in the month when it sunk by a few inches it's been completely stable ever since I wish my state was like that number 13.
Guatemala City Guatemala natural sinkholes are normally associated with regions that sit above large Limestone formations but this isn't the only material that can slowly be eroded by water to create Caverns beneath the surface that will eventually collapse that's what residents of Guatemala City learned in June of 2010 when they heard An Almighty crash and discovered a huge new hole that appeared in the street it happened a few days after tropical storm Agatha had passed by and initially was assumed that this was the cause of the whole water flowing over a short period of time though wouldn't be enough to create a Chasm that measured 60 feet wide and 300 feet deep and the storm instead was likely to have just been what triggered the collapse Guatemala City itself is built on top of ground that's mainly made up of pumice fill which is a material that's deposited during volcanic eruptions often because of its heat and weight this will become Solid Rock but it's unconsolidated in this particular region and so is erodible by water this combined with very few city regulations surrounding the installation and maintenance of water pipes is what's believed to have been the cause of the sinkhole just a small trickle from a water main over a number of years would have been enough to carve a large hole and the water from the tropical storm likely overloaded the city's sewage pipes and also increased the weight of the topmost surface which collapsed without any support from Below number 12. Rotorua New Zealand Rotorua in New Zealand is a region that's long been associated with geological activity and it was in May of 2018 on a farm in a place called earthquake flat that an unusual type of sinkhole suddenly appeared over the previous weekend there had been a torrential storm during which almost seven inches of rain had fallen in 38 hours this water of course had to flow somewhere and in a place that's prone to earthquakes there are natural fault lines that run beneath the ground these act as natural channels for water which pass through them and carves The Rock to form Subterranean cavities once enough of the material had been removed the surface layer collapsed and revealed a huge crack in the landscape that measured 656 feet long and looking similar to what you might expect to find after a powerful earthquake amazingly this particular sinkhole was found to have exposed the summit of a volcano that had last erupted around sixty thousand years ago which would have dispersed a huge amount of material over the surrounding area ankles like these are fairly common around this area and give geologists a fascinating Glimpse at the different layers of rock and how it was formed over tens of thousands of years of course it was far less exciting for the farmer who owned the land who was forced to find a new path to herd their livestock to new fields number 11 sharagesh Russia when you go to a ski resort you're normally advised to keep to the marked slopes to guarantee a perfect condition to carve through the snow and while you may expect to come across a crevasse or an obstruction if you decide to take your own path guests of a popular Russian Resort close to the sharagesh mine in the kemarova region of Siberia would have been in for a huge surprise in 2022 if they ventured too far a huge 100 foot wide hole had opened up in the ice to the side of a road and perilously close to some houses one of which sat dangerously on the edge of the opening rather than being a surprise though something like this was actually expected so much so that the houses had been evacuated a few days earlier that's because the region is home to a valuable mining operation that had expanded in recent years instability had been detected in the ground which is why there was enough of a warning to move people out of Harm's Way and in the aftermath mining was suspended so the tunnels could be surveyed for any further risk eventually the local authorities plan to refill the hole that formed and its hope that precautionary measures will prevent something like it from ever happening again still you better be extra vigilant if you are ever going to take to those slopes again number 10 Konya Valley turkey the konyan valley is in the middle of turkey's so-called Bread Basket which is a region that because of its fertile soil and favorable conditions is crucial to the country's agricultural industry there are vast quantities of crops such as beetroot and corn but in recent years they've been increasingly struck by prolonged periods of drought this has led to the formation of countless sinkholes across the plains with hundreds appearing each year and is becoming such a problem that farmers are now changing the types of crops that they can grow the reason these sinkholes are being created is because of the falling level of the water table the ground is made up of a limestone that's normally moist but because of the drought and the Intensive farming that uses vast amounts of groundwater the limestone is drying out and the ground beneath it which is normally wet and able to support the weight of what's above it is drying too and becoming weaker ultimately this leads to a collapse which can show itself at surface level as a small depression of a few feet or something far more treacherous like ones that are several hundred feet deep luckily it's rare that anyone seriously hurt because of the spar's population density but farmers are now looking at crops that require less water in an attempt to minimize how often this is happening number nine desetta Texas the town of deseta Texas has a troubled history when it comes to sinkholes and this is the place that's been most struck by the phenomena in the whole of the U. S the reason for this is that it's actually built on top of a natural salt Dome that formed hundreds of thousands if not millions of years ago when a lake that was once in the region dried up this means the ground is extremely vulnerable to being eroded away by water and has led to several large sinkholes in the past few decades in 1969 a large hole opened up to the surprise of everyone living there and it collapsed even further in 1981 to form a large hole that now has a lake at the bottom of it the presence of the water inside the hole is led to it gradually growing ever since and is now 250 feet wide and 30 feet deep as it increases in size its created instability elsewhere too and it's believed to have been a contributing factor to another sinkhole that opened up in 2008 this one known as the sinkhole demaio because of the date when it collapsed has also been linked with the human activity in the area and it's now much larger than the others at 600 feet long 525 feet wide and 150 feet deep with this ever present risk it's no surprise that people have been moving away from desetta since the first hole opened up and the once thriving town now has a population of just over 900 people number eight Mulberry Florida aquifers are huge underground regions of permeable rock that absorb large quantities of water and are vital to the provision of clean fresh water to homes across the world but due to their porous nature they can create regions of instability that sometimes leads to the development of sinkholes this can be problematic if these openings leads to substances contaminating the water in the aquiferm and the worst known example of this took place in Mulberry Florida in 2016.
a 45-foot diameter sinkhole opened up above an aquifer which provides water to most of the state but this one just so happened to develop beneath a waste water storage Pond that was operated by Mosaic the biggest phosphate fertilizer manufacturer in the world it would take three weeks for the company to publicly acknowledge what had happened and in that time more than 215 million gallons of radioactive and contaminated water had drained through the hole into the aquifer before being able to divert anything else that was being stored there luckily the contaminated water was slow moving through the aqua firm and it was time to pump it back out before it reached the public Source it was a close call though and shows just how easy it could have been for an absolute catastrophe to take place [Music] number seven michonchani Croatia in late 2020 Central Croatia was struck by an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.
