Recent appearance of a sinkhole in Guatemala resurfaced the old question to the fore : Are sinkholes just another natural phenomena or a natural culmination of human activities? And the question was never more clearly answered than it is now; Human activities, not nature, was the likely cause of the gaping sinkhole that opened up in Guatemala streets on Sunday, in the views of a geologist says.
The hollowing of earth is being credited to a burst sewer pipe or storm drain, according to Sam Bonis, a geologist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, who currently lives in Guatemala City. The cavity formation is supposedly triggered by the deluge from tropical storm Agatha. The fact that the city's foundation is composed of a material called pumice fill, deposited during past volcanic eruption, bears down heavily on the cenote formation.
It is contentious that whether or not to refer Guatemala sinkhole as a sinkhole because "Natural sinkholes generally form when heavy, water-saturated soil causes the roof of an underground limestone cavity to collapse, or when water widens a natural fracture in limestone bedrock but there is no limestone beneath the section of Guatemala City where the new sinkhole appeared, at least not at the depth at which the hole formed", Bonis said. Be or not a sinkhole, technically, Guatemala sinkhole-as-supposed is a potential threat.And as a grave matter of fact, Guatemala sinkhole is not the lone sinkhole instance of self-sustained wrath, there are several others. Find the images of a few sinkholes together with Guatemala sinkhole at the bottom.
GUATEMALA SINKHOLE
PICHER, OKLAHOMA
BLUEHOLE, BELIZE
ICELAND SINKHOLE
NEVERSINK PIT, ALABAMA
LISBON, PORTUGAL
