"That's no water main explosion, that's a f***in' sinkhole!"

[powerpc127]

These were my friend's words upon seeing the street near our train station where a huge hole had appeared overnight. I was walking there this morning when I noticed a cop car blocking the street. I thought it was a car accident until I reached it and saw a hole beyond some caution tape. Then I assumed it was construction and kept moving. It didn't occur to me until I was on the platform that cops don't hang around construction sites too much. There was a crowd of people looking at it from the platform. I joined them and immediately knew it was bigger than your everyday construction work. There was a hole covering half of the street that spread out onto the sidewalk. Huge chunks of cement were caving into the ground to about five feet deep. A streetlamp had fallen at an odd angle never fully seperated from the cement it was attached to. I was expecting War of the Worlds to start playing out in front of me. The destruction was pretty crazy.
On my way back from school, a couple friends who got off at my stop told me it was a water main explosion or something. Another person who didn't see it in the morning (how he missed it is beyond me) was shocked by the damage. The image is especially concerning when you look at it from the train platform. The hole is less that 20 feet away from elevated train tracks :scared:
Anyways, Ill try to find some pictures from newspaper websites and the like. The media was all over it last time I walked by. Also, if I go out again today, I'll take my camera and try to put some pics up.

 

[powerpc127]

Wow. Just over 12 hours and already it's on CNN. Here's their story.

A 3-foot-diameter water main burst on Chicago's North Side early Tuesday, gushing out thousands of gallons of water that crumbled pavement and turned a major street into a small lake.

Police closed several blocks around Montrose Avenue and Wolcott Street and the Chicago Transit Authority briefly shut down a nearby train station and rerouted buses.

A hole in the street quickly grew to 25 feet long and the torrent ripped a light pole and several parking meters from the sidewalk.

"It was a dramatic scene," said Tom LaPorte, spokesman for the city's Department of Water Management. "That's lot of water to come out of the pipe all at once. The deepest was about 4 feet of water."

here's the link
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/22/chicago.water.main.ap/index.html

 

[[DT]]

WOW!!! Just watched the video on the CNN link. It looked like it was snowing too! Total chaos in Chi-town.

 

[DBloke]

Sinkholes are freaky
http://youtube.com/watch?v=BPGOtCb4A3M

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qpIT0TW-uBQ&feature=related