Holy Hell! Cavern threatens to engorge NM town
November 16, 2009 | Matthew Barker-Benfield
An underground cavern in Carlsbad, New Mexico is anthropomorphized and hungry. The only thing that can satiate it? “Part of a highway, several small businesses, a trailer park, and possibly a church.” Oh, and the cavern was created because of oil drilling and general lack of environmental regulation and oversight. Clearly, this particular hole is an elitist anti-religion liberal-socialist!In all seriousness, there is a huge cavern underneath a portion of the town of Carlsbad (you’d think they’d be satisfied with their current collection of caverns). A local oil well had been flushing water into a salt-rich layer of earth 400 feet underground, extracting several millions barrels of brine over several decades, which is used to help with drilling. Of course, when you take a a layer of the earth out, that has consequences. Plus, the caustic properties of salt water probably don’t help the situation. Now, the flushing has stopped but it is too late.
Of course, similar instances of massive sinkholes have happened over the past few decades, including other unpopulated locations in the state of New Mexico. Unfortunately, state regulators didn’t connect the dots in time in this highly populated city and tourist destination. A state of emergency has been declared in the both the city and the county, allowing them to access funds that will help the prepare for the inevitable sinkhole; “The clock is ticking,” said Jim Goodbar, a senior cave specialist with the Bureau of Land Management. Let’s all hope for the safety of Carlsbad citizens!
[AOL News]
This is crazy!
This is like a giant version of what happened in LA a few months ago, though that hole was caused by a broken water pipe. The erosion was so bad a fire truck fell through the street and into the hole.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32733629/ns/us_news-life/
I can’t help but feeling like Mother Earth is giving us a poke in the ribs now and then just to remind us who is really in charge.
That photo is a fake. The article is full of lies.
Get the facts straight before you talk about something you don’t know.
The photo is real, though it is not from Carlsbad, New Mexico. Yeah, I (the author) have little knowledge of geology, but there are plenty of examples of this event occurring in other locations due to brine extraction. There may be some assertions that were inaccurate, though the underlying fact is true; that government experts are expecting a sinkhole to appear in the future, and are preparing for WHEN it arrives, not if. If you’re arguing against that, take it to the Associated Press, not me or the other hundreds of websites that have covered this including MSNBC, AOL News, Huffington Post, and even Fox News.
Eveyone reading this is welcome to visit Carlsbad, NM and see exactly what is happening here.
BTW: There is no sink hole in Carlsbad, NM. There is only a possibility of a sinkhole forming in a very small portion within the city limits.