CHAPTER 1 A SUDDEN COLLAPSE Cars drive along a busy street Then a traffic light turns red The drivers come to a stop As they wait for the light to turn green the ground begins to move Dirt and pavement collapse A large hole opens up blocking three lanes of traffic Part of the sidewalk falls into the hole So does a car that was parked nearby Streets had to be closed after a sinkhole opened in Brooklyn New York 5
6 Fortunately no one is hurt But there is a hole in the middle of the street A sinkhole has formed Sinkholes are bowl shaped holes in the ground There are thousands of sinkholes around the world They can be many sizes Some are as small as 2 feet 0 6 m across Others can be hundreds UNDERWATER SINKHOLES The deepest underwater sinkhole ever found is in the South China Sea It is in a coral reef near the Paracel Islands Scientists used underwater robots to see how deep the sinkhole was It was 987 feet 301 m deep More than 20 kinds of fish were discovered inside it
The Great Blue Hole is a large underwater sinkhole in the Caribbean Sea of feet wide Sinkholes can even form underwater Sinkholes happen when bedrock collapses Bedrock is the layer of rock that is below the surface of the land 7
