Be careful where you’re walking
The photos below are a reminder why it’s never a good idea to walk home in the dark or after you’ve had too much to imbibe. I ran across the photos below on smilepanic.com related to some of the biggest holes on earth – no doubt!
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Mir Mine was an open pit diamond mine located in Mirny, Eastern Siberia, Russia. The mine is 1,720 ft deep with a diameter of 3,900 ft, and is the second largest excavated hole in the world. Even the airspace above the mine is closed to helicopters because they have actually been sucked in by the downward air flow.
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The Big Hole is located in Kimberley, the capital of the Northern Cape of South Africa and is 1,500 feet wide, over 42 acres in surface, and over 700 feet deep.
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The Great Blue Hole is a large underwater sinkhole off the coast of Belize near the center of Lighthouse Reef, a small atoll 62 mi from Belize City. Looks like a great place to go diving!
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The Glory Hole at Monticello Dam, California. A glory hole is used to drain water from a reservoir when the dam is at full capacity. It is the largest in the world, enabling it to consume 400 cubic feet of water every second. You definitely do NOT want to fall into this area when the Glory Hole is in operation!
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These sinkholes are called “Las Simas de Sarisariñama” and can be found on the Sarisariñama Plateau in Venezuela. They are some of the largest sinkholes in the world. The sinkholes measure 350 meters wide and 350 meters deep and are a geological marvel.
photo source: amazonair.com
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The Bingham Canyon Mine is the largest man-made excavation in the world. Located near Salt Lake City, Utah this open-pit mining operation in production since 1906 extracts copper from the Oquirrh Mountains. The pit is 2.5 miles wide, over 0.75 miles deep, and covers 1,900 acres.
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Guatemala City Sinkhole. On the 23rd of February 2007, a 330 foot deep sinkhole swallowed up part of a crowded neighborhood in Guatemala City and killed two people. The video below is in Spanish but still gives you an understanding of the enormity of this unexpected natural phenomena.
