Ohio sinkhole size of four football fields swallows freeway
President Barack Obama (L) tours through V & M Star, a leading producer of seamless pipe for the oil and gas industry, in Youngstown, Ohio, May 18, 2010.
A giant sinkhole the size of four football fields has swallowed part of Ohio's State Route 516 in Dover. The road will be closed for months, WKYC reported. "It's very unusual that something like this would happen," Ohio Department of Transportation District 11 Director Lloyd McAdam told WKYC.
The land belongs to the Newton Asphalt Company, which had been dredging for sand 50-feet below the ground before the sinkhole developed, UPI reported. The company may have caused the sinkhole, but the more immediate cause appears to be the collapse of a nearby pond.
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"It appears to me that dredging took away the bottom of the slope," McAdam told WKYC, "and that probably eroded away and started cascading down, and just started filling the hole and filling the hole."
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