Ill never look at a flushing toilet the same way
Fascinating story.
'It took two days for the water to fill the mine'
How many thousands of cubic liters that must have been. The 'gieser' 30'-0" into the air .. holy smokes ! The part about the barges popping back up is freaky too.
No loss of life is really hard to believe.
What is it about Lousiana?
On a side note there is a lake about a mile from my house that was literally drained by a sinkhole. Of course nothing on the magnitude of your story it took a few weeks to empty but empty it did. There was no loss of life or property (except now its not exactly lake front).
No small lake either it used to be one of the premire bass fishing lakes in north america (Lake Jackson). It was never deep about 10 meters tops but it covered a huge area. Inside of a month it was gone, all of it. People were driving accross the muddy bed in those big ass trucks picking up old outboard motors and crap. I was kinda hoping one would fall in a sinkhole.
Anyhow they used the oppurtunity to clean the muck (which was tainted by decades of 2 cycle outboard oil) and wait for it to fill back up. There was talk about building a dam around the sinkhole but cooler heads prevailed and let nature take its course.
Its starting to fill again after about 5 years.
Oh and Red / Sam's fishing camp, bar, and liquor store is still there
