A massive sinkhole, stretching more than 30 metres across and approximately 15 metres deep, opened up in an Illinois park Wednesday, swallowing a light pole and several benches and leaving a huge crater in its wake.
Surveillance video at Gordon Moore City Park in Alton captured the stunning and terrifying moment, as the turf opened up, sending a cloud of dust and dirt soaring into the sky.
“At the surface, it was all at once,” Michael Haynes, director of Alton Parks and Recreation, told Fox 2 News in Illinois. “It all went. Actually, one of our lights was in the middle and it’s all gone.”
Now, the park is closed while investigators try to exactly determine what happened, but Haynes told First Alert 4 in Missouri the sinkhole was the result of subsidence from an underground mine that’s below the soccer fields.
“The mines have been here and in this area for decades and decades. It’s never been brought up before so I’m told it’s an anomaly. We’ll wait until the investigation is complete,” he said.
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“It was surreal. Kind of like a movie where the ground just falls out from underneath you,” Haynes continued. “Hopefully, we can find a remedy and get plans together to move forward before we get into our busy season out here again.”
According to Haynes, crews had been mining about 45 metres below the fields. Now, New Frontier Materials, the company mining underneath the park, has engineers assessing the damage and figuring out a plan to fix the soccer fields.
“We will work with the city to remediate this issue as quickly and safely as possible to ensure minimal impact on the community,” Matt Barkett, company spokesman, wrote in a statement released Wednesday.
The rest of the park will remain open, including nearby baseball diamonds and a golf course, assured Haynes.
The park’s artificial turf was installed just six years ago, to the tune of US$1.2 million (about C$1.64 million).
Luckily, no one was using the fields at the time, and no one was injured.
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