Giant Texas sinkhole swallowing everything
Pastor Dale Morgan
Giant Texas sinkhole swallowing everything*
By staff reporters
May 09, 2008 10:43am
* Sinkhole opens up in Texas town
* Tractors, trucks and trees swallowed by ground
* Pictures of the sinkhole's damage
A TRACTOR, truck and oil field equipment have been swallowed up by a
giant sinkhole that has opened up in a Texas town.
A sinkhole, a depression or hole in the ground, is usually caused by the
removal of soil or bedrock below the surface.
The subsiding earth is swallowing up everything around it in the
southeast Texas town of Daisetta and was reported to be at least 300m in
diameter and 60m deep.
No one had been injured and no homes had been lost so far, the
Associated Press reported.
The ground had been "flat as a pancake" before it began to collapse, the
county's emergency management co-ordinator Tom Branch told the Houston
Chronicle.
As much as 6m an hour was vanishing into the growing pit.
The Chroncle reported officials as saying nobody knew how big the hole
might get or when it would stop growing.
Authorities are monitoring the pit and keeping people away.
The ground might have caved in because of the collapse of an old salt
dome where oil brine and natural gas were stored underground, AP reported.
The town sits on a salt dome, one of the most common types of traps for
oil.