Foreign Property News | Posted by Zarni Kyaw
Buriticupu, a town of roughly 55,000 people located in the Brazilian Amazon, risks being swallowed by giant ravines that have been growing “exponentially” over the last few months.
Authorities in Buriticupu have already evacuated 1,200 people from the highest-risk areas of the town, but with no solution in sight, the giant ravines threaten to eventually swallow the entire settlement.
Buriticupu’s sinkhole problem dates back roughly three decades and is reportedly the cause of a combination of factors, such as erosion-prone sandy soil, poor urban planning, and deforestation, but it has been exacerbated by recent heavy rains which caused the sinkholes to expand at a rapid pace.
A couple of years ago, experts identified 26 giant holes advancing toward the town, some of which have since merged to create ravines up to 20 meters deep.
The large soil erosions are known in Brazil as "voçoroca", a word of indigenous origins that means "to tear the earth" and is the equivalent of sinkholes.
“It’s very scary. Sometimes I pray to God that it doesn’t rain so hard, there are times when I even ask Him for forgiveness,” Nazaré Feitosa, a safety technician who lives near the craters, told Globo.
“When it rains, it’s so scary that no one sleeps here, we stay awake all night listening to the ground collapse,” another Buriticupu resident said.
“Sometimes I get up to look and check if it’s happening close to our house. If it is, we have to evacuate.”
In the last ten years, a single sinkhole has swallowed up three streets and more than 50 houses in Buriticupu.
Some streets have partially disappeared and those houses in the immediate proximity of the sinkholes that have not collapsed, have been evacuated.
Ref: Giant Sinkholes Threaten to Swallow Entire Brazilian Town (odditycentral)
