Expert thinks secondary sinkhole likely responsible for growing alarm in Texas town

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Sinkhole expands in Texas

A town in Texas observes what is believed to be a secondary sinkhole that developed about 15 years after a larger event, east of Houston.

DAISETTA, Texas A sinkhole that made headlines in 2008 for its sudden appearance in a small Texas town outside of Houston is back in the news after experts say what appears to be a secondary hole grew, swallowing discarded material.

Officials in Daisetta, Texas, said they were first notified on April 2 of the changes on the ground and have informed residents in the immediate area of ​​the situation.

Aerial video taken by helicopter showed at least one storage tank and several partially submerged outpost buildings in the new low.

Randall Orndorff, a research geologist with the US Geological Survey, was one of the original team members who studied the first sinkhole and linked the initial event to oil and gas operations that created a vacuum, eventually leading to collapse.

“The oil and gas industry produces waste when drilling. And they found that salt domes are good enough to put waste in. At the Daisetta site, there was a small operation that was injecting fluids in the salt dome, and for some reason, we don’t really know, the salt dissolved and created a vacuum – then it collapsed all of a sudden in 2008,” Orndorff said.

The original chasm widened in the first few months and slowed down as many events do. The hole was as wide as about three football fields and hundreds of feet deep.

Orndorff, who has seen several videos of the latest developments on the site, believes the latest low is removed from the core of the first event, likely adding weight to the theory that a secondary sinkhole may have developed.

Why did a secondary hole develop about 15 years after the first?

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Local authorities have not issued an evacuation order for the new hole, which is more than 100 feet wide.

According to the USGS, sinkholes are possible along the Gulf Coast due to underground salt formations, which can be exasperated by industrial activities.

“It’s pretty stable in the natural environment, but when you start injecting the fluids, you’re going to start causing problems,” Orndorff said.

Aerial sinkhole that formed in Louisiana in 2012 (NASA/On Wings Care/NASA)

The incident is similar in nature to a sinkhole that was discovered in 2012, about an hour’s drive from New Orleans in Assumption Parish, Louisiana.

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Oil and gas operations in the rural community are believed to have triggered the Bayou Corne sinkhole incident, which triggered hundreds of evacuations and a hole a few dozen acres wide.

Other states where sinkholes are common include Florida, Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

USGS Sinkhole Hotspot Map (USGS/FOX Weather)

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