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Now That's What I Call A Housing Crash!


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HOLA441
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HOLA442
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HOLA443
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HOLA444
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HOLA445
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HOLA446

Now this is what I call subsidence....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1283066/Guatemala-sink-hole-Tropical-storm-Agatha-blows-200ft-hole-city.html

Is this kind of thing ever likely to happen back in Blighty? Any geologists out there have any views and if so which part of the UK would be most susceptible?

It happened on Brighton seafront about 30 years ago. There was an old building a mile or so to the East side of the pier, but on the other side of the sea front road. It was occupied by students who hearda crack one morning. Then the entire facade of the building fell down exposing some very surprised sleepy students to the sea wind! They were evacuated. LATER the whole building decended into a hole deep below the sea front road! Hunderds of tons of concrete were poured down the hole with no sign of it filling the enormous hole. The sea had licked a giant underground cave under the road and building and took away its foundations.

There is another building there now!!

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HOLA447

I've often wondered about London. Does anyone know exactly how much bedrock has been excavated over the years to make way for all the tube lines and sewerage networks?

I think it's sitting on a huge mass of clay; I don't know if it would be easy to remove enough of it to cause any problems.

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HOLA448

It happened on Brighton seafront about 30 years ago. There was an old building a mile or so to the East side of the pier, but on the other side of the sea front road. It was occupied by students who hearda crack one morning. Then the entire facade of the building fell down exposing some very surprised sleepy students to the sea wind! They were evacuated. LATER the whole building decended into a hole deep below the sea front road! Hunderds of tons of concrete were poured down the hole with no sign of it filling the enormous hole. The sea had licked a giant underground cave under the road and building and took away its foundations.

There is another building there now!!

It's the first two houses in Percival Terrace - Google Street View.

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HOLA449

When I lived in Bristol, work on an extension to a nearby school was hastily stopped after a JCB uncovered what appeared to be a stack of railway sleepers, but were in fact the only thing holding up the school's playing field from a sudden descent into hundreds of feet of abandoned mine shaft. A bloke who worked for the water authorities told me it was not uncommon to lose a "mole" suddenly into these abandoned workings.

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HOLA4410
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HOLA4411

Agreed. Naturally susceptible area geologically plus lots of buildings are built on or near spent coal mine shafts.

My brother is a retired lab rat for the old National Coal Board in Lancashire. He says the problem is not the documented shafts but the fact that there were so many unregistered workings when mining first started. At the height there were over fifty working mines in Wigan alone.

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HOLA4412

I've often wondered about London. Does anyone know exactly how much bedrock has been excavated over the years to make way for all the tube lines and sewerage networks?

London's on clay so all these tunnels are reinforced.

Gypsum sink holes are impressive in Yorkshire. And East Yorkshire's crumbling away into the sea at a rate of knots. "Visit it while it's still there" should be the tourist board slogan.

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