California has its landslides, the Midwest its tornadoes, and along with hurricanes, Florida has...sinkholes. They’re sort of like your own personal earthquake. There are many famous sinkholes, both large and small. The largest in the world is the Qattara Depression west of Cairo, Egypt; it measures 80 kilometers by 120 kilometers. The famous cenotes of Mexico can also be considered sinkholes; the water-filled underground caverns are sometimes open to the surface, and dot the landscape of the state of Quintana Roo on the Yucatan Peninsula.
Sinkholes can occur naturally (as in the case of the Mexican cenotes), or be man-made. They are not uncommon in Florida, as well as some other areas of the United States including New Jersey, Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. As a matter of fact, just few years ago, a sinkhole swallowed up a warehouse and showroom in Kentucky filled with classic cars.
The danger of sinkholes is proportional to their size and location, of course. If a sinkhole opens up in a remote rural area with few man-made structures and sparse population, its impact is negligible; if one should occur in the middle of Main Street in a densely populated urban area, the damage can be catastrophic – even tragic.
What is a Sinkhole?
According to the website conserve-energy-future.com, naturally occurring sinkholes “occur due to erosion or underground water. They start developing a long time before they actually appear. The ground beneath our feet is not as much of a solid structure as we think it is. It’s made up of dirt, along with many rocks and minerals. There is water continually seeping in between the mud, rocks, and minerals, [making] its way down to the ground water reservoirs. As this happens, the water slowly erodes the rocks and minerals. Sometimes the flow of water increases to a point when it washes away the underground structure of the land. And when the structure becomes too weak to support the surface of the earth, it collapses and opens up a hole. This is how sinkholes are formed.”
Those areas, which have bedrock consisting primarily of limestone and carbonate rock, also known as karst, are most susceptible to sinkhole formation. Florida sits upon one such geological zone. Florida’s sinkholes have swallowed up homes—and even part of a resort hotel building at Disney World.