A huge sinkhole in Guatemala City (map), Guatemala, crashed into being on Sunday, reportedly swallowing a three-story building—and echoing a similar, 2007 sinkhole in Guatemala.
The sinkhole has likely been weeks or even years in the making—floodwaters from tropical storm Agatha caused the sinkhole to finally collapse, scientists say.
The sinkhole appears to be about 60 feet (18 meters) wide and about 30 stories deep, said James Currens, a hydrogeologist at the University of Kentucky.
A ruptured sewer line is thought to have caused the sinkhole that appeared in Guatemala City in 2007.
The 2010 Guatemala sinkhole could have formed in a similar fashion, Currens said. A burst sanitary or storm sewer may have been slowly saturating the surrounding soil for a long time before tropical storm Agatha added to the inundation.
Depending on the makeup of the subsurface layer, the Guatemala sinkhole "could eventually enlarge and take in more buildings," he said.
Typically, officials fill in sinkholes with large rocks and other debris. But the 2010 Guatemala sinkhole "is so huge that it's going to take a lot of fill material to fill it," Currens said.
"I don't know what they're going to do."
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