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As to why it's just now becoming known....well Carlsbad has a combination of people who don't want the sink hole to be known and then there are those people who are so apathetic that they just don't care.
If so how I wonder why there wasn't more word on this?
IMO:
1. On a disaster scale, it is not that big.
2. How do you take interesting photos or video? Nothing has happened yet. Without photos or videos it is not news these days.
It seems like the government should just move everybody. It's not the whole town -- it's a a trailer park, after all, a church and several businesses -- how hard would it be to move them somewhere? It would have been a good use for stimulus money.
I bet they spend a lot more studying the thing and trying to shore it than they would if they had just moved the people. In the long run it collapses anyway and the people have a few hours warning at best.
They don't fully know how big it is under there yet. I believe they ran out of money before they got seismic to the south. The canal is in the area to the south. The sinkhole has the potential to take it out at that point.
Here's a link to the Carlsbad Fire Department. Carlsbad Fire Department (http://www.carlsbadnm.com/fire/ - broken link) Check out the October 28, 2009 OCD Presentation Slides under "Brine Well Potential Collapse ..." This should show the potential area of concern.
2. How do you take interesting photos or video? Nothing has happened yet. Without photos or videos it is not news these days.
It seems like the government should just move everybody. It's not the whole town -- it's a a trailer park, after all, a church and several businesses -- how hard would it be to move them somewhere? It would have been a good use for stimulus money.
I bet they spend a lot more studying the thing and trying to shore it than they would if they had just moved the people. In the long run it collapses anyway and the people have a few hours warning at best.
I know it's not that big but it is news (at least to me) I like going to Carlsbad, I don't wanna fall in .
I know it's not that big but it is news (at least to me) I like going to Carlsbad, I don't wanna fall in .
Of course it news by any rational standard. But with today's competing media it is not news without compelling photos or video. What is a TV news program going to do? Show a video of a trailer park just sitting there? Everybody picks up their remotes and switches to another channel showing a fire raging or a grisly auto accident.
Once you fall in, then it will be news and you'll get your fifteen minutes of fame. Ideally, you will still be alive to do interviews.
Typing the word "sinkhole" into the YouTube web site will return many videos of sinkholes around the world. One even shows the largest sinkhole in the USA to be the National Capitol in Washington, DC!
Here is one similar to the problem in Carlsbad - in the Houston area - caused by a salt cavern collapse:
I still don't get it. There was -- or do I misunderstand? -- a large deposit of salt there -- a solid. Water was pumped in and then the resultant brine pumped out. The solid salt is now gone. There is now a big space under there. Similar places have collapsed nearby. So it seems it will collapse eventually. So the authorities hope they'll be able to give the people a few hours notice? And what if they are wrong? Why not move it? It is a trailer park -- trailers are designed to be moved -- you pick them up and put them on trucks.
I guess that they feel there is still a 1.2873% chance that the
sinkhole won't take out those structures, and since the people
effected are all poor and unimportant ...
I also note that the articles referenced intimate that the sinkhole
is close to The Caverns - even though it's 20 miles away from the
closest part of the park's boundaries.
If you haven't tried to map it, it's a stone's throw from the
intersection of Rt-285 and Rt-180.
The article also makes it look like it's an oil industry conspiracy
to rape the land and run, when in fact, it's just a small oil field
services company operating irresponsibly in combination with
irresponsible/nonexistant oversight.
Isn't most of the Carlsbad area underlain with limestone caverns that could lend to sinkhole geomorphology? I once found a small sinkhole near the W.I.P.P. site which is about 26 miles east of Carlsbad. Much of the area near the sinkhole had older outcroppings of limestone but the "hole" was only about three feet in diameter and was a recent feature. Being much younger and daring back then, I took a rope tied to a nearby mesquite and descended into the hole for about ten feet straight down. At the bottom the hole, it took a right turn and traveled about ten more feet, then dropped off into a pitch black void. I threw a stone over the edge and never heard it hit anything. I didn't go any further as I began to imagine me standing on a paper-thin floor with a stadium-sized cavern beneath me.
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