A giant sinkhole opened up in the garden of a Cornish pensioner on Saturday 31 October 2015. The whole appeared in the garden of Kathleen Angel (93) of the Carbis Bay area of St Ives, is thought to be about 30 m deep.
The 31 October 2015 St Ives sinkhole. Western Morning News.
Sinkholes
are generally caused by water eroding soft limestone or unconsolidated
deposits from beneath, causing a hole that works its way upwards and
eventually opening spectacularly at the surface. Where there are
unconsolidated deposits at the surface they can infill from the sides,
apparently swallowing objects at the surface, including people, without
trace.
On this occasion the sinkhole opened up after a work team on a nearby construction site broke a water main, triggering a flood that affected several nearby homes. This apparently caused the top of a disused mine shaft hidden beneath the garden to cave in, exposing the shaft beneath. St Ives, like many areas of Cornwall has had a mining industry for hundreds of years, principally producing tin and copper, but also lead, zinc, silver, uranium, arsenic, Cassiterite, Chalcopyrite, Malachite, Azurite and Pitchblende, and many disused shafts are known to lie beneath the town, with occasional incidents in which shafts are opened up unexpectedly by natural events.
See also...
Magnitude 1.0 Earthquake off the coast of Newquay, Cornwall. The British Geological Survey recorded
a Magnitude 1.0 Earthquake at a depth of 6 km slightly off the coast of
the resort of Newquay in Cornwall, at about 0.50 pm...
Series of Earthquakes of the south coast of Cornwall. The British Geological Survey recorded
a series of small Earthquakes off the south coast of Cornwall (about 45
km to the southeast of Falmouth) on...
Earthquake off the coast of Cornwall.
The British
Geological Survey recorded a Magnitude 1.8 Earthquake at a depth of 8
km under the English Channel, roughly 60 km o the southeast of Falmouth
in Cornwall, slightly before 11.15 am British
Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.