Huge Sinkhole Found on Yamal Peninsula, Russia
By STORMnews on 12/07/2014
A huge sinkhole (crater) was found on Yamal Peninsula, Russia. This unique discovery was made by the helicopter pilots engaged in oil and gas industry on Yamal, says Chelyabinsky Vestnik.
The hole is several dozen kilometers away from the Bovanenskovo field, Yamal’s largest gas deposit.
It was first reported by the Tyumen-Kosmopoisk group in VKontakte social network: “A giant crater near Bovanenskovo, Yamal, Tyumen Region (thanks for the video made by the second pilot of Mi8!). This is not a “typical” sinkhole, its origin is not quite clear. It looks like an explosion came first (one can see explosion-triggered dispersion of soil and rock outburst) followed by a sinkhole. The explosion (man-made? meteor-related?) was probably followed by the soil sinking into quite a wide underground river. One can see streams of water at the bottom. The hole size can be estimated by comparison to the size of trees (albeit dwarf) surrounding it.”
Tyumen Times website found another video of this crater posted by Sergey Kokhanov on YouTube in May 2014:
https://youtu.be/CbHyBIV0lKc