Two friends of mine over on Livejournal have been experiencing two different geological (or at least geomorphological) troubles lately, and I’d like to expand on their situations a bit.
My friend Misty lives in the small town of Gillespie, IL. It’s approximately an hour north of St. Louis, and is smack dab in the middle of a formerly mining county. Reports say that mine subsidence, or sinking and shifting of the earth’s surface due to an underground mine collapse, is common in the area. On Saturday, the principal of the school noticed cracks all through the foundation of the school – and declared that it had to be closed indefinitely, and can potentially never be reopened. Now, officials are panicing because nobody knows what to do with the students now that their $7.5 million, 7 year old school is unusable.
Mine subsidence is becoming more and more common, with more and more mines becoming abandoned. While not initially dangerous, the ground will eventually sink in all the way and cause some pretty serious damages. Googling, I came across this site by the Pennsylvania State Department of Environmental Protection that explains the different types of damage that mine subsidence can cause – of those, sinkholes are the most common.
More information on the situation in Gillespie can be found here and here.
Melissa, on the other hand, lives a bit further north, just outside of Fargo, ND on the Minnesota side. Her husband, Z, has been tracking the flooding in his own blog, Life in a Floodplain. The spring thaw, paired with a particularly nasty storm season, has really brought on an evil flood, which finally made the news on this half of the country sometime last week.
Worst of all is that late last week, a winter storm hit and dumped about 4 inches of snow on the area. The picture here is of explosives blowing up ice dams in the Missouri River.
The dangers of living on a floodplain are relatively well known – as a matter of fact, you aren’t allowed to build on a floodplain anymore. Buildings that are already standing, though, are still able to be inhabited. And with the high amount of control that is put on river structure now, meanders aren’t allowed to move, so floodplain flooding is even more exaggerated. I don’t have any solid answers as to why people choose to live on floodplains – but the risk is always present, and awareness can be incredibly helpful.
For more information on the flooding, check this link, or keep your eyes peeled for an update to Z’s blog.
Wow, that is a really cool picture of the ice dams. I had heard that once upon a time, they actually used dynamite to explode the ice dams! This is now the highest on record that the Red River of the North has gotten. Glad it is going down now — although they say it could crest AGAIN in April. Hope they hold onto those sand bags!
@ Melissa – From what I read in the CNN article, they’re still using explosives to blow them up!