Saturday, June 11, 2005
A Giant Sucking Sound
74-year-old Fyodor Dobryakov went down to White Lake in Russia one early morning in May to catch fish but the lake was gone. This was a large 48-foot deep reservoir in the village of Bolotnitkovo, about 250 miles east of Moscow, fed by underwater springs, dark, cold and often capped by ice. But that morning, he said, "I heard a noise, and when I looked right, I saw there was an abyss, and the water was rushing into the abyss like mad. The trees were falling into the lake and getting sucked in too."
The authorities were called, then the television stations. Where residents once picnicked and swam, there was now only a huge crater. Dmitry Zaytsev, an officer with the Emergency Situations Ministry who was sent to investigate found that "everything -- fish, water, everything -- got sucked into that hole. And judging by the size of the crater, it must have happened pretty quickly, in a matter of a few hours." Government officials now theorize that a shift in soil underneath the lake opened access to an underground channel that drained the water, estimated from several hundred thousand to more than a million cubic yards, into a subterranean cavern. From there, it may have flowed into the Oka River a few miles away.
I couldn't disagree more strongly. I believe that the water got drained to the other side of the Earth because of excessive oil drilling in Alaska. That explains the recent drop in gasoline prices, from over $2.50 a gallon last month to $2.27 when I filled up my truck yesterday. Of course, prices are still too high, and I hope the oil guys discover a few more Russian lakes to tap into. But they'd better hurry up and be done before the environmentalists find out.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 6:57 AM
