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12th May 2016

A huge sinkhole has appeared in a road in London and swallowed a car

Puts those potholes on your road into perspective

Carl Anka

Remember watching cartoons as a kid and getting really worked up about how quicksand was a threat?

It was everywhere. People would go on adventures, get stuck in quicksand and if they didn’t move quickly they’d end up swallowed whole.

Then you grew up and found out quicksand wasn’t everywhere, and was just bodies of water with a bit of topsoil on top.

You stopped being scared of them.

And then sink holes happened.

This morning saw a large sinkhole appear in Greenwich, London. Managing to swallow an entire car.

Greenwich Borough Metropolitan Police were called to Woodland Terrace in south east London at 3.23am following reports of a sinkhole in the road. When officers found the hole, they reported it had dragged in a large blue estate car and had enough space to fit another vehicle within its space.

A police spokesman said nobody was injured when the sinkhole opened up.

People on social media were understandably taken aback by the size of the massive hole that appeared overnight.

While others too the surprising development in good humour.

As best as we can understand, sinkholes are caused via a combination of erosion and water drainage.

Cover collapse sinkholes, like the one that has just occurred in Greenwich are caused in areas where soluble rock gets dissolved by water that manages to worm its way into cracks formed by erosion.

As water continues to hollow out the bedrock beneath, eventually the weight of the top layer becomes too much and it all caves in forming a sinkhole.

Simply put: rain gets into the ground from knackered roads and pavements and washes out all the rock supporting it.

 

This article originally appeared on JOE.co.uk.