Lovecraftian Horror in Guatemala

Posted by Martin R on February 23, 2007
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The Great Old Ones are stirring in their sleep beneath Guatemala City.

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala (AP) — A giant sinkhole opened before dawn Friday, swallowing several homes and a truck and leaving a father and two teenagers missing in Guatemala City. [...]

The pit was emitting foul odors, loud noises and tremors, and a rush of water could be heard from its depths. Authorities feared it could widen or others could open up.

Security officials were on guard for possible looters and to clear the area of onlookers.

Can the stars be right already?

Link.

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  1. #1 John McKay
    February 23, 2007

    Rather than Lovecraft, I was thinking nature news lately reads like a Medieval chronicle, sure that the last days have arrived.

    Giant crabs are overrunning the seas off Norway. Peasants in the colony of Virginia report the birth of a two-faced cow. A squid the size of a beer wagon was pulled from the Southern seas. A four-legged duck is stalking the moors of Hampshire. A foul smelling hole in the earth swollowed several houses and a truck in distant Guatemala. I’ve been feeling like I have slight case of the plague lately…

    You get the idea.

  2. #2 Martin R
    February 24, 2007

    Aha, you mean someone big behind the scenes is preparing to get Medieval on our asses? Probably Cthulhu.

  3. #3 Hans Persson
    February 27, 2007

    It would actually be interesting to know how they will handle this. Do you send someone down to see where the hole leads to? Do you just dump stuff into the hole until you can repave the road on top?

  4. #4 Martin R
    February 27, 2007

    It’s a sinkhole, that is, part of the ceiling of an underground fookin’ river has caved in. This means that any minute, more of that ceiling may drop into the river…

  5. #5 Hans Persson
    February 27, 2007

    Probably not something which is on the top ten list of things you want in the middle of a city. But what to do about it?

  6. #6 Martin R
    February 27, 2007

    I’m no construction geologist, but I guess the thing to do would be

    1. Re-route all sewer mains through the area.

    2. Make test-drillings in a 50 m grid across the threatened area.

    3. Evacuate the area and dynamite all bits where the underground river’s ceiling is dangerously thin.

    4. Fill in the resulting depressions.

  7. #7 Hans Persson
    February 27, 2007

    It seems to me that doing something like that could mean clogging up the river down there. That in turn could mean that A Lot Of Water has to go somewhere else which may lead to interesting consequences somewhere else…

  8. #8 Martin R
    February 27, 2007

    Yeah, you’d have to repeat the procedure once a decade or so. Or move.

  9. #9 Magnus
    February 27, 2007

    Probably some geophysics method will be used to se where the water has gone.

  10. #10 Jim
    February 27, 2007

    One can put fluorescein dye in the water and detect it in the parts per trillion range. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescein

    Notice the large open sewer pipe? Probably want to stay away from the beaches and rivers for awhile!

  11. #11 Martin R
    February 28, 2007

    Oh, right, that’s how speleologists find the lower entrances to underground rivercourses: find a stream that goes underground, dunk a bucket of dye into it, look for pink streams lower down on the mountain.

    The body of one of the three people who died when the hole opened in Guatemala City is reported to have been found on the bank of the main surface river a long way downstream from the city.