A giant sinkhole in Hinton, West Virginia, that threatened to swallow the town’s police station on Route 20 prompted State Highway Division officials to pour fill under the road and begin construction of a 120-foot bridge over the sinkhole. CNN.
“We put it all together like a big Lego set,” Joe Pack, chief district operations engineer for the West Virginia Division of Highways, said in a news release Friday.
The sinkhole first appeared in June and was originally 6 feet wide and 30 feet deep. The police department moved staff out of the building in July, and the building is expected to be demolished, WVNS-TV reported. The fill proved to be a successful solution for the ongoing road until rains from Hurricane Nicole earlier this month washed it all away and made the sinkhole even bigger.
Construction of a temporary bridge began Saturday and is expected to take 24 to 48 hours. Officials will eventually have to replace the 90-year-old drain under the road that caused the collapse in the first place with a new, 300-foot permanent steel alternative.
Several area schools were forced to move their classes online due to the depression. Summers County Schools Superintendent David Warvel told CNN that all students in grades six through 12 have been participating in distance learning for the past week.
West Virginia Department of Transportation
Personal learning will return when the bridge is built, while the permanent steel drainage structure will prove to be a more complicated matter. The state will soon accept bids for a contract to build it, according to state Sen. Stephen Baldwin.
“A long-term solution has been identified and will be auctioned as soon as possible,” Baldwin wrote on Facebook. “It will cost about $5 million. The state will pay.”
According to the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, the eastern region of the state, which includes Summers County, consists of karst terrain, which is prone to sinkholes due to its porous limestone material and various other soluble rock formations.
Sinkholes are usually caused when acidic groundwater dissolves that limestone — and other soluble rocks such as salt beds, domes, gypsum and various carbonate rocks — and the underlying soil gives way, according to the US Geological Survey.
Currently, the construction of the bridge is expected to be completed by the end of the month and the next phase of a more permanent repair will begin soon.
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