Inadequate infrastructure plus climate enhanced rains = massive failure.
Buck Roberts, Meridian’s public safety director, told the newspaper that the collapse isn’t technically a sinkhole because it didn’t result from an underground aquifer drying up. He’s calling it an accident.
WTOK said the city on the state border with Alabama, which has a population of about 40,000, has received 3 inches of rain this weekend and nearly 10 in the last two weeks. The restaurant opened earlier this week.
NBCNews mad it sound like a pipe leakage caused it: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/giant-sinkhole-swallows-over-dozen-cars-mississippi-international-house-pancakes-n459466 but the extra rain I’m sure helped!!!
Just watched a clip of this on the NBC Nightly News. Pretty spectacular, and what amazes me is that there seemed to be little advance warning—no cracks or settling before a huge area caved in. We’ll see more of this with the increased rainfall we’re getting.
The obvious clue to the cause is at the very beginning of the video.
It seems that the pipe just collapsed because it was too thin to hold the weight of waterlogged earth and cars above it.
The collapse could have started anywhere, and would then propagate until reaching the ends.
Andy nailed it. Grossly insufficient, even without the rain it was an accident waiting to happen.
Yes, the drone video shows more of the uncollapsed ends than the NBC News clip did, and it would appear that the pipe just folded down the center lengthwise from what should not have been that big a load.
This culvert was obviously designed by one of those ~16,000 engineers that signed the Oregon Petition against AGW. And he probably used inferior materials because the owner of the parking lot (a member of the 1%) wanted to maximize his gain by minimizing his expenses. So what if some people from the 99% die and a whole bunch of cars get destroyed—-that’s what insurance and lawyers are for—and the lot owner can write it all off his taxes as a business expense.