00:03sinkholes they can be sudden catastrophic and deadly and the numbers are rising all over the
00:14world even in Britain the hole starts to take the pavements and then it starts to take the
00:21gardens when is it going to stop is it going to take the house with huge holes appearing
00:26in places where they've never appeared before this is how to save yourself a policeman said
00:33be prepared to leave your house within about 10 minutes your property if this were their home
00:38how would they feel your business I was just watching this thing get ever closer to destroying
00:44everything that we had and even your pet every time he moved he was just getting sucked further
00:49in I genuinely thought you know he was gonna have to just be shot here in the hole when a
00:54sinkhole
00:54attacks and disaster strikes there are two ways to avoid a sinkhole catastrophe one is to rely on
01:12luck the other is to spot the early warning signs and take action before it's too late something that
01:20back in 2015 the residents in this quiet suburb of St Albans failed to do I heard something go about
01:31half past one in the morning and then I heard movement and I thought something's happened
01:35it was father and he said there was a hole in the road and it was growing he said we're
01:43evacuating the
01:44streets now a giant sinkhole had appeared in the middle of the road and it was huge it was 66
01:53feet
01:53wide and 33 feet deep but it had started as a much smaller hole a few days earlier local resident
02:02Ken Hill
02:03was driving to the shops when he spotted something strange at the side of the road it was the early
02:08warning sign of a sinkhole but Ken like everyone else in the street didn't know it Wednesday lunch
02:15time I was off out and as I got to the end here I noticed that there was a postman
02:20being picked up
02:21out of a manhole and I thought what's going on there the manhole in the pavement had given way but
02:27Ken
02:27didn't think anything of it until a few days later then on the Sunday one of my neighbors threw a
02:33stone down
02:33there and he said that went a long way we realized then there was a hell of a lot of
02:37debt to the
02:38thing that everybody first thought that neighbor was retired civil engineer Ray Postle he approached
02:45the postman swallowing pothole to see how deep it really was not realizing that he was standing on
02:51dangerous ground the day before the collapse I stood throwing stones down and where I was standing
02:58and the next day he was in midair the very last people to drive over the spot where Ray had
03:09been
03:09standing were musicians from the aptly named band freefall jazz every week they practice at Julia May's
03:17house and as fate would have it their practice session fell on the night of the sinkhole when the session
03:24ended each one of them drove home right over the spot where the sinkhole was about to open up
03:31the rest of the stuff bass player Chris Mottram Worcester was the last to leave at that time night
03:38there aren't normally other cars driving around I was probably the last one to go over that bit of
03:44ground finally she set off at around 12 30 in the morning when I left there was nothing that I
03:51could
03:51see in the dark anyway Chris had no idea she was driving over a road on the verge of collapse
04:01appearing in
04:04the middle of the night a huge crater dangerously close to sleeping residents rupturing gas mains
04:12leaving people living here without water or electricity the residents had missed the sign of the sinkhole but
04:20they'd been lucky no one was killed or injured now they could only stand and watch as the sinkhole grew
04:29and grew so what we thought was a hole that just did the body of the road then starts to
04:35take the
04:36pavements and then it starts to take the gardens and then there was a car on the edge so this
04:41thing
04:41is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger when's it going to stop is it going to take the house
04:45it was
04:46only in the morning and I saw the helicopter shots and I thought I think I recognized that road you
04:52know that looks familiar a few minutes more maybe it might have um I never thought about that if we'd
04:58have carried on talking for another half an hour we'd have seen it I mean yeah could have seen it
05:02yeah
05:03or worse a few minutes later and Chris's car would have plunged headfirst into a 10 meter deep hole
05:15city sinkholes can be devastating and deadly cars and their drivers are often victims in Los Angeles
05:24in 2017 this sinkhole swallowed a car luckily emergency crews were quickly on the scene and
05:31the woman was saved just moments before a second car toppled over the edge but there are some parts of
05:44the world where sinkholes are so common you cannot rely on luck Florida is a place where new sinkholes
05:52appear every week and where you can't afford to miss the early warning signs because that can be the
05:57difference between life and death this popular resort is just 10 miles from Disney World at the
06:08height of the summer the last thing any holiday maker here would expect when they went to bed at
06:12night would be for their luxury villa to be torn apart by a sinkhole but that's exactly what happened
06:19one fateful August night in 2013 in the dark of night about 30 percent of a three-story building
06:26just collapsed swallowed up by a 100-foot sinkhole our room itself is over 100 feet underground the next day
06:34the building was still moving and when you come up on a scene and see this in the middle of
06:39the night
06:40how could there not be someone injured
06:53sinkholes can strike anywhere at any time but while some can strike without warning there are often
06:59small clues that precede the moment of the collapse so the best way to avoid a sinkhole tragedy is to
07:07be
07:07alert to those early signs of a sinkhole summer Bay is a popular resort near Orlando in Florida just 10
07:21miles from Disney World at the height of the summer in August 2013 it was packed with families enjoying a
07:29fun-filled vacation each building here houses 12 timeshare apartments but on the night of the
07:3711th of August a sudden hole in the ground transformed a luxury holiday apartment block into rubble
07:53terrified holidaymakers watched in disbelief as an entire apartment building collapsed in on itself and
08:00pulled a second block down with it crumbling into a 60-foot-wide crater
08:08this looked like it could be one of America's worst ever sinkhole catastrophes so when the results
08:13president Paul Caldwell arrived on the scene in the early hours of the morning that's exactly what he
08:19expected to find I was here about five o'clock in the morning and when you come up on a
08:25scene and see
08:25this in the middle of the night your first reaction is how could there not be someone injured there
08:32were 36 people in this building just minutes before it collapsed and yet incredibly despite the devastation
08:39and destruction not one person had been killed or injured there wasn't a scratch a cut a nick no
08:46physical injuries this remarkable fact was all down to the quick thinking of an alert employee spotted
08:54the early signs of a sinkhole one of my security guards was walking about here and crack and then
09:00he heard a second window crack
09:17This is the third window
09:18It's going to be very successful
09:19The majority of the fish work of the population is starting to locate a cat
09:24This is going to be very strong
09:30it's going to be very strong
09:30but to be very strong
09:30C'mon
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