Sinkhole swallows pond

Sinkhole swallows pond, There was something missing when Mark Korb went outside Sunday morning. Most notably, the giant pond that had once been in his yard, which was now a gaping crater in the ground. The Newcastle, Calif., man says the manmade pond on his property fell into a sinkhole that sucked it up in a matter of hours. The speed at which the underground cavity devoured the pond was staggering.

Korb noted, by contrast, for instance, that when he drained the pond years ago with a pump the process took seven days. A geology professor from nearby Sierra College attributed the sinkhole to old mining activity or a preexisting fracture rather than groundwater dissolving material.