Guatemala: lady awakens to giant gaping sinkhole appearing under her bed

"When we heard the loud boom we thought a gas canister from a neighbouring home had exploded, or there had been a crash on the street. We rushed out to look and saw nothing. A gentleman told me that the noise came from my house, and we searched until we found it under my bed."—65-year-old Inocenta Hernandez of Guatemala, in whose home a 12-meter-deep sinkhole spontaneously appeared. (thanks, @arriabelli)

• [MonsterMan]

  Gotta be diamond down there!

• [gmr2048]

  Maybe the brain-trust that is BoingBoing can answer this…How is it that these sinkholes (“formed by natural erosion”) are almost perfectly circular?

  • [erissian]

    They are formed when water dissolves minerals in the ground. The straight, round tunnel is its path through the earth. When the water first makes some headway downward, the rest of the water will tend to pool there; expanding and deepening that spot.

    When the surface gives away, it will be over the round hole, instead of the weakened but still supported area around it. This is why they block off the surrounding area as well.

  • [Mister44]

    google sez, “Holes often occur when the dissolution of bedrock results in a surface depression that collects water. As the depression gathers more water, the water leaks downward and eats away at more bedrock, catalyzing its further dissolution. Eventually a vertical, circular hole forms straight through the bedrock. “

  • [Anonymous]

    it’s actually not technically a sinkhole – it’s a much scarier geological thing:

    http://news.discovery.com/earth/dont-call-the-guatemala-sinkhole-a-sinkhole.html

• [RufusTheGreat]

  How nice, the last restful night of sleep she will ever have has been documented.

• [Chuck]

  I hate it when Hell tries to claim me like that.

  Contractors who can reinforce the floor and install anti-demonic wards are kind of pricey, ya know.

• [ML]

  There may be a couple of those inside Pavon (a prison in Guatemala…)

• [LuckyNotLucky]

  I admire a sinkhole that can trim the linoleum in such a tidy manner.

• [Brainspore]

  You spend years trying to convince kids that monsters aren’t going to crawl out from under their beds and then one of the bastards leaves his burrow in plain view for the world to see.

• [knoxblox]

  You know, if it wasn’t someone old enough to be my mom, I could make a fart joke here.

• [Doctor Device]

  she should measure her rooms right away, to make sure the inside of her house still fits in the outside.