Oklahoma disaster zone: tornadoes, drought, weather extremes, earthquakes and now sinkholes

December 1, 2011 –  SAYRE, OK. — Residents in Beckham County near Sayre say a massive sinkhole suddenly appeared overnight. They say it’s so big a small house can fit inside it. Jack Damron cares for the property and says the hole formed just two days after Oklahoma’s last earthquake about two weeks ago. Experts say it most likely isn’t related. Either way, the hole is still growing day by day. “Kind of spooky. You don’t want to mess with it today,” Damron said. Because whatever lies beneath the flat Oklahoma soil, isn’t quite finished. “We’ve got to let it finish settling, because we don’t know how deep it’s going to get. It’s still growing,” he said “When it first formed you could actually sit here for 30 minutes and see stuff just move.” Damron has been farming the land where the sinkhole formed for nearly 20 years, but overnight he says the hole suddenly appeared. It’s a pretty scary scenario considering he’s been driving tractors over this exact spot, never dreaming the ground beneath him could give way and collapse. “You can see the tractor went right over it. It would have swallowed the tractor,” he said. “We had a lot of onlookers.”The sinkhole is about 40 feet deep and 40 feet wide. Sinkholes are not uncommon in western Oklahoma, but how this one got here is still unknown. Geologists at the Oklahoma Geological Survey say several things could have caused the sinkhole including salt or rock formations dissolving or a drought. –KFOR

contribution Sue