Baltimore "Sinkhole" Actually a Landslide
An expert explains how the two geological events are different.
When is a sinkhole not a sinkhole? When it's a landslide.
It occurred a day after heavy storms drenched the region and dumped more than four inches of rain on the city. That saturation, coupled with gravity and the weakness of a 120-year-old retaining wall, washed a hillside on East 26th Street into a railway ravine next to CSX freight tracks.
It's the sort of slide "that happens all the time" when rain or burst pipes wash away underground soil, Maryland Geological Survey Director Richard Ortt told the Baltimore Sun. "Lots of [water] at great velocity will erode dirt."
Sinkholes, on the other hand, occur when the ground collapses into a void that forms when groundwater erodes subterranean rocks, says
