How the ground could cause us a hole lot of trouble

FORGET climate change, the sun running out of power or a nuclear war — mankind could meet its end by being sucked back into the ground.

It won’t have escaped your notice in recent years that parts of the world have been hit with sinkholes, when craters of various sizes suddenly appear and cause havoc.

Actually, when you investigate further, it seems every part of the world has been hit with that sinking feeling — and it’s only going to get worse.

Many of the worst and biggest sinkholes have happened in China, with the USA a close second, but from New Zealand to Kent, Germany to Brazil, huge holes have appeared out of the blue.

Whole buildings have been swallowed by the largest ones, some continue to grow, while ones in Japan were fixed in record-fast time.

Others sucked cars and lorries in, then covered them and their passengers with earth and concrete, and one horrendous sinkhole in Florida took a sleeping man, his bed, his bedroom and most of his house in, never to be seen again.

The whole subject still needs work, and nobody is sure if they are caused by extreme weather patterns, fracking, floods or something else going wrong deep below the surface.

It is true that many of China and America’s sinkhole disasters have been down to freak rain, torrential downpours or burst water mains.

But the real reason a lot of water caused such carnage was because the ground was already weakened.

Closer to home, in October, 2015, residents at Fontmell Close, St Albans, woke up to find a massive sinkhole near several homes.

Just weeks earlier, a 40-foot hole opened on the Mancunian Way, at the Ancoats end of the Manchester commuter road.

April of that same year had seen an OAP’s mobility scooter swallowed by a sinkhole in Swanley, Kent, along with two sheds.

Perhaps we should have spotted the omens — it was at the start of 2015 that a large hole appeared at Traigh Golf Course, near Arisaig, Scotland.

If these relatively-recent events make you think sinkholes are a new phenomenon, think again, as December 2001 in Waihi, New Zealand, saw a house collapse into a sinkhole.

A family of five, with three young children, narrowly escaped serious injury or worse.

Looking back, it was around the same time Manchester was hit, America’s National Corvette Museum sank into a new sinkhole, losing eight rare Corvettes including a 1992 car, the priceless one-millionth Corvette.

In May of 2010, a massive, perfectly-circular sinkhole opened up in Guatemala City, swallowing a three-storey building.

Schmalkalden, Germany, suffered a vast sinkhole in November, 2010.

January, 2007, saw horror in Sao Paulo, Brazil, when a sinkhole opened beside subway station construction works. It took vehicles from a nearby roadway, which were instantly covered with tons of earth and concrete.

September, 2009, saw four firemen escape with their lives when their fire engine sank into a large hole caused by a burst water main, in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles.

A massive sinkhole appeared in the Perm region of the Urals, Russia, and it is still getting bigger.

It happened after a mine collapsed in late 2014, and is over 400ft long, 300ft deep.

Also in Russia, a tunnel collapsed into a sinkhole in Sochi in March, 2013, leaving a very large house, thankfully empty, leaning at a perilous angle.

The previous summer, Salt Springs, Florida, had seen a sinkhole open up at a parking lot, with large vehicles almost falling in.

We’ve seen a 150m sinkhole open up near Queensland’s Rainbow Beach, Australia, swallowing a caravan, camping trailer and tents, and 130 people having to be evacuated.

And we have recoiled in horror as a huge hole opened outside an Amsterdam medical centre, caused by a burst waterpipe — 500 patients had to be evacuated.

In late 2014, Gordey Efremov was in his Lada in the unpronounceable Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk when the ground suddenly swallowed him and his vehicle.

He had been going slowly, and heavy rain had further weakened a bad patch — because his car stayed on the same spot too long, its weight brought them crashing down.

Incredibly, he lived to tell that tale.

England has also seen a major sinkhole open up in the driveway of a house in Walter’s Ash, Buckinghamshire, while a stretch of the M2 in North Kent was closed after a 15-foot hole was found in the central reservation.

So all of this begs the questions — what exactly are “they” doing about it, and are we really seeing far more sinkholes than we used to?

It’s been revealed that sinkholes are simply “a naturally-occurring phenomenon that happens when water gradually dissolves soluble bedrock”.

This eventually forms a hole under the surface, and it just takes the right set of circumstances above ground for it to give way and take everything with it.

This means that not only can sudden large amounts of water cause them, but sudden removal of large amounts of water can also create them.

The south-east of Britain, because of so much chalk under the surface, is said to be especially at risk.

On the other hand, experts point out that most major sinkholes began to form many centuries ago.

That means they are not really a problem made just by mankind, but rather by nature itself — which obviously makes it slightly more difficult to monitor and control them.

And they aren’t getting particularly bad nowadays, it’s just that quite a few have reached the age where they were close to collapse.

However, the fact we have so many heavy buildings, vehicles and other pressures on the landscape now makes them more likely to occur.

One thing is for sure. Sinkholes may look spectacular, but they are horrific for those affected directly by them, and not knowing how strong the land is below our own houses and cars is quite scary.