Giant Guatemalan 'Sinkhole' Is Worse Than We Thought 357
reillymj writes "Despite hundreds of media reports to the contrary, Sam Bonis, a geologist whose life work has been studying Guatemalan geology, has plainly said that the dramatic 'sinkhole' in Guatemala City that opened over the weekend isn't a sinkhole at all. Instead, he called it a 'piping feature' and warned that because the country's capital city sits on a pile of loose volcanic ash, the over one million people living on top of the pile are in danger. 'I'd hate to have to be in the government right now,' Bonis, who worked for the Guatemalan government's Instituto Geografico Nacional for 16 years, said. 'There is an excellent potential for this to happen again. It could happen almost anywhere in the city.'"
Look on the bright side (Score:4, Funny)
Looks like the city nearly doubled its surface area!
Re:Look on the bright side (Score:5, Funny)
Division by Zero (Score:5, Funny)
I have a solution (Score:4, Funny)
Call in the Fantastic Four (Score:2, Funny)
It's the Rise of the Silver Surfer!!!
It's not a sinkhole (Score:5, Funny)
Goatse recently moved to Guatemala City.
Hey wait, idea! (Score:4, Funny)
Any chance a large amount of oil would fix things?
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
I think this guy used to be a software dev manager (Score:4, Funny)
That huge gaping hole that swallowed your neighbor? That's not a geological bug, it's a 'feature'.
The entrance... (Score:3, Funny)
I think we have just found the entrance to middle earth. Does anyone see any dinosaurs or dragons down there?
Well this is unusual (Score:5, Funny)
My ex made a /. headline!
Re:Look on the bright side (Score:4, Funny)
I have an environment friendly solution! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Look on the bright side (Score:5, Funny)
The city could have a hole lot of problems.
Re:sinkhole (Score:4, Funny)
This is Guatemala City! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Piping Feature? No... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Moving the country? (Score:3, Funny)
Probably not even remotely possible due to its size, but a similar problem seems to have been created in Kiruna, in Sweden. The town sits on top of the world's largest iron ore mine, and the mine has created a large cavity under the town. They are moving everything, in some cases, literally brick by brick.
That sounds like an aweful lot of bork.
Re:Look on the bright side (Score:2, Funny)
When I started here all there was was ash! (Score:5, Funny)
.
insightful? lol (Score:0, Funny)
Odd that posting a RTFA comment is now meritorious enough to get someone an insightful mod. :/
Re:Moving the country? (Score:5, Funny)
And a bunch of confused tourists wondering why their GPSes are off so badly - the map is right, but it says the town is somewhere else.
Re:Look on the bright side (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Some good pictures (Score:5, Funny)
It's getting pretty close to 2012.
Just sayin
Re:It's not a sinkhole (Score:4, Funny)
Goatse recently moved to Guatemala City.
Guatamala Opened Arse To Sink Everyone?
Re:Piping Feature? No... (Score:3, Funny)
Turkmenistan? Wikipedia is making up country names now?
Wikipedia may have made up Uzbekistan [wikipedia.org], but not Turkmenistan. That was made up by Burat or somebody.
Re:Errr... yeah (Score:1, Funny)
I thought the same thing: "looks `shopped".
Good question as to why nobody's dropped a camera down the hole yet.
My theory is that most people in Guatemala are too poor to afford risking both a decent video camera and the crane/rigging equipment required to get a picture from a significant depth inside. Also they might be uneasy about the potentially unstable sides of the freaking huge hole in the ground and the certainly fatal drop if those walls collapsed. But that's just a guess...
Emergence Day (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Empathy? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Look on the bright side (Score:3, Funny)
[It] isn't a sinkhole at all. Instead, he called it a 'piping feature'
it's not a hole it's a feature
Re:Look on the bright side (Score:3, Funny)
From orbit? It's the only way to be sure.
Re:Look on the bright side (Score:3, Funny)
Nah... it's probably all downhill from here.
Re:Look on the bright side (Score:2, Funny)
So now the went from "GuateMala" to "GuatePeor"..
Re:Piping Feature? No... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Look on the bright side (Score:4, Funny)
The city could have a hole lot of problems.
...unless they take a holistic approach to them!
#DIV/0! error (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Piping Feature? No... (Score:3, Funny)
That is both very funny, well related, and yet more disgusting that I really want to process.
Re:Piping Feature? No... (Score:3, Funny)
He was getting too much spam on the Balrog account, it's a feature, not a bug.
Re:When I started here all there was was ash! (Score:1, Funny)
Clearly, you don't know your ash from a hole in the ground.
Re:Errr... yeah (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Look on the bright side (Score:3, Funny)
Won't ever complain about the pot holes in my street again.