The office of Guatemala's president handed out this aerial view of a crater that opened up after Agatha hit

Quote :

"Tropical storm leaves more than 115 dead in Central America (CNN) -- At least 115 people have died after a tropical storm battered Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador over the weekend, officials in those countries reported. Guatemala was hit hardest, with at least 92 deaths, 54 people missing and 59 injured, emergency officials said. Nearly 112,000 people have been evacuated and more than 29,000 areliving in temporary shelters, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom said in an address to the nation late Sunday. The devastation has been widespread throughout Guatemala with mudslides destroying homes and buildings and burying some victims. At least nine rivers have dramatically higher levels and 13 bridges have collapsed, the nation's emergency services said. In the northern part of Guatemala City, the downpour created a giant sinkhole that swallowed up a space larger than the area of a street intersection. Residents told CNN that a three-story building and a house fell into the hole. A local newspaper reported that a private security guard was killed when the sinkhole opened up, but authorities had not confirmed the fatality. Residents said that a poor sewage drainage system underground was to blame for the sinkhole. A similar hole opened up nearby last year, they said. "

more story here: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/05/31/honduras.storm.emergency/index.html?hpt=T1

5/31/2010 8:14:15 PM

damn i was literally just about to post this

5/31/2010 8:15:15 PM

message_topic.aspx?topic=522797&page=66#14037427

5/31/2010 8:17:16 PM

That doesn't look real. Its almost a perfect circle the whole way down. I'd really like to know how deep it is though.

For some reason, it makes me think of the aliens coming up from the ground in War of the Worlds.

5/31/2010 8:18:18 PM

5/31/2010 8:21:43 PM

dammit bigman you and your punch-beating

5/31/2010 8:32:22 PM

yeah, the perfect circles are weird but the whole area of the yucatan peninsula spreading down through belize, etc. is composed of karst topography and the cenotes (sinkhole like things) that form in the area are often almost perfectly circluar. there really is almost no satisfactory explaination at the current time.

5/31/2010 8:37:57 PM

the only reasonable explanation is that invisible alien ships are performing contextually-relevant earth biopsies and laughing their antennae off as they watch us scratch our heads

5/31/2010 8:43:58 PM

/0

5/31/2010 8:45:09 PM

Unreal.

Can't see the water table in the photo, that's good. How would you go about filling the thing up?

5/31/2010 9:14:06 PM

you would have to have the shittiest luck of all time for the earth to open up and swallow you and your whole family

5/31/2010 9:20:36 PM

goatse

5/31/2010 9:20:53 PM

that is so awesome

5/31/2010 9:21:42 PM

I want to know whats in the darkness down there

5/31/2010 9:22:36 PM

Quote :

"I want to know whats in the darkness down there"

serious answer: Lower air temps, maybe hazard gas, soil, rock, water at some point.

[Edited on May 31, 2010 at 9:25 PM. Reason : -]

5/31/2010 9:24:48 PM

japan

5/31/2010 9:25:17 PM

stinkhole

5/31/2010 9:41:53 PM

[old]

5/31/2010 9:48:27 PM

what do you do with something like that? i don't see how you could fill it in

5/31/2010 9:57:53 PM

^If it was near the coast, you could pump sand into it.

You could shore the top 30-50 feet and make it a tourist attraction. =/

5/31/2010 10:00:27 PM

[Edited on May 31, 2010 at 10:01 PM. Reason : make a parking garage in it]

5/31/2010 10:00:37 PM

Quote :

"I want to know whats in the darkness down there"

Well, according to the article, a three story building and a house are down there.

5/31/2010 10:09:23 PM

Specifically....it looks like that layer of soil/rock/whatever ends and there is a larger chasm or open void. Just wondering if thats typical. How large it could be.

Can it have monsters in it. godzilla etc.

5/31/2010 10:12:00 PM

Quote :

"Can it have monsters in it. godzilla etc."

Specifically, to answer your question, no.

5/31/2010 10:12:42 PM

i wouldn't dismiss the possibility of there being at least, some monsters down there.

5/31/2010 10:13:42 PM

that darkness could be water

5/31/2010 10:13:52 PM

Quote :

"yeah, the perfect circles are weird but the whole area of the yucatan peninsula spreading down through belize, etc. is composed of karst topography and the cenotes (sinkhole like things) that form in the area are often almost perfectly circluar. there really is almost no satisfactory explaination at the current time."

Sinkholes are usually round, due to gravity and physics. There's your explanation.

5/31/2010 10:15:28 PM

^I hope that never happens to my house.

5/31/2010 10:17:11 PM

Make sure you don't build your house on top of a large water or sewer main

5/31/2010 10:17:52 PM

why the hell are they watering the hole in that first pic, pretty sure that wouldnt help at all. must have been a gas line leaking or something

5/31/2010 10:20:26 PM

THE APOCALYPSE BEGINS

5/31/2010 10:21:21 PM

5/31/2010 10:27:58 PM

My cousin's husband is there right now. He was supposed to come home today but they've delayed the flight until Friday. He's in the same city as that sink hole but is safe. I'd be a nervous wreck if my husband were anywhere near that place right now!!!!!

5/31/2010 10:48:47 PM

^^ AWESOME!
I really don't want it to be goatse'd...

5/31/2010 10:59:40 PM

5/31/2010 11:42:38 PM

6/1/2010 1:39:09 AM

I nevah get a space ship, I nevah!

6/1/2010 5:32:38 AM

1)

2) How deep is that hole in the first pic?

3) What's down there?

4) If some of the people who fell inside survived, can they be helped out with a helicopter? I guess that depends on if anybody can hear/see them? Maybe they can call for help if they have cell phones!

5) WTF is a 'sinkhole' anyway? I mean, I thought the earth's crust was mostly solid? The hollowness inside the sinkhole, is that natural, or has that been excavated out in the past for water/gas lines? And whether natural or atificial hollowness, how thick is the crust on top:

a) There was only a thin layer on top and hollowness underneath
b) The crust was more than just a thin layer, perhaps a couple of hundred feet thick, and THEN there was hollowness, so all the couple of hundred feet of matter fell inside

?

Wiki to the rescue, I guess!

6/1/2010 6:23:46 AM

Its 60m deep by 30m wide.

The issue is that the pipes and shit leak like crazy down there, which was eroding underground and carrying away the materials. Combine that with a tropical storm dumping torrential amounts of rain that were running through the storm drains and, apparently, through that area. The bottom is water there, so its basically a river running under that spot slowly ate the ground underneath and the storm added to the runoff, plus severally saturated and weakened the ground above. Eventually the weight of the building, plus saturated soil and the rapidly increasing area that opened up caused the whole thing to collapse down and the mini river below carried all of that dirt off as well.

6/1/2010 6:40:25 AM

YOU CRAZY, EARF!

6/1/2010 6:40:29 AM

Quote :

"5) WTF is a 'sinkhole' anyway?"

Read these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinkhole

Quote :

"A sinkhole, also known as a sink, shake hole, swallow hole, swallet, doline or cenote, is a natural depression or hole in the surface topography caused by the removal of soil or bedrock, often both, by water."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karst_topography

Quote :

"Karst topography is a landscape shaped by the dissolution of a layer or layers of soluble bedrock, usually carbonate rock such as limestone or dolomite."

6/1/2010 7:25:08 AM

I think we need to focus on the monsters.

6/1/2010 7:55:22 AM

6/1/2010 8:03:01 AM

Quote :

"A local newspaper reported that a private security guard was killed when the sinkhole opened up, but authorities had not confirmed the fatality."

He shouldn't have divided by zero

6/1/2010 8:17:38 AM

6/1/2010 9:04:53 AM

6/1/2010 9:43:03 AM

6/1/2010 9:48:05 AM

^^lol

6/1/2010 9:48:06 AM

i still say this looks fake. i'm not going to believe it's real until i see video of it.

6/1/2010 10:19:18 AM

set em up

6/1/2010 10:30:13 AM