Off The Record
A Massive Hole As Big As The White House Just Opened Up in Chile — And Scientists Are Gravely Concerned
A strange sinkhole appeared in Chine, and geologists are further investigating this strange but dangerous phenomenon.
The hole has the width of the White House and it is 656 feet deep. It appeared over the weekend outside of the town of Tierra Amarilla in the Atacama region on land owned and operated by Canada’s Lundin Mining company.
“There is a considerable distance, approximately 200 meters (656 feet), to the bottom,“ , Sernageomin’s director, David Montenegro, said in a statement. “We haven’t detected any material down there, but we have seen the presence of a lot of water.”
Chile’s National Service of Geology and Mining, Sernageomin, sent specialists to investigate the strange sinkhole further to check if the Canadian mining company operations has anything to do with it.
The entire site has been sealed off as local authorities have been unable to come to a conclusion what caused this massive hole in the ground.
This large sinkhole, which is over 650 feet deep and 82 feet in diameter, appeared in a mining area in the northern part of Chile https://t.co/tNIyN9MLh3 pic.twitter.com/hVYe2W2XaN
— Reuters (@Reuters) August 2, 2022
Lundin Mining said that the workers weren’t harmed or impacted by this strange phenomenon.
Upon detection, the area was immediately isolated, and the relevant regulatory authorities notified. There has been no impact to personnel, equipment or infrastructure.”
“The closest home is more than 600m (1,969ft) away while any populated area or public service are almost a kilometre away from the affected zone,” the official statement from the company added.
The Canadian mining companies have been operation throughout Latin America over the years and they have been accused of wide range of human and environmental rights violations.
Tierra Amarilla’s mayor, Cristóbal Zúñiga, told a local radio station that the community living near the mining site “has always had a fear that something like this could happen.”
“Today it happened in a space that’s an agricultural property, but our greatest fear now is that this could happen in a populated place, on a street, in a school,” said Zuñiga.
“Protecting the integrity of our inhabitants is our greatest concern at the moment.”
However, what’s worse for the community is that the mysterious sinkhole is still growing.
