While Burns, Oregon has been dominating the news of late with the Malheur Wildlife Refuge standoff, another part of Oregon has seen two events since December 2015 which has some concerned.
Massive sinkholes, the latest of which is being called a "monster" that just won't stop growing, larger than any seen in southwest Oregon in 20 years and has forced the closure of a long stretch of coastal highway. According to a WAPO report this most recent chasm measures over 80 feet and NBC claims it exceeds 60 feet in depth.
A huge sinkhole that won't stop growing has shut down a stretch of Highway 101 in coastal Oregon.
"It's massive. There's just no other way to describe it," Jared Castle, Department of Transportation spokesman for southwest Oregon, told NBC News.
The state closed down part of 101 in Harbor, Oregon, on Thursday night due to the sinkhole, which is the second sinkhole in as many months in the area. The first one opened on Dec. 13 in a restaurant parking lot next to the highway and, like Thursday's sinkhole, just kept growing.
While onlookers watch in awe and state officials plan repairs, others are wondering if these are not more signs of the headline warnings from July 2015 by one of Oregon's top earthquake experts who predicted the "really big one" would wipe out the entire Northwest, with the area's FEMA director stating at the time that should a massive earthquake strike everything west of I-5 "will be toast."
Despite the fact that the expert warnings specified Northwest Oregon and these latest sinkholes are in Southwest Oregon, the Cascadia Subduction Zone, referenced in the July 2015 warnings, stretches across the coast of Oregon.
With 8 earthquakes in the last 8 days, 153 in the last month and 1,666 earthquakes in the last year, are we looking at earth's warning us that the 72 year "overdue" big one is closer than we think?
NOTE - Those numbers come from earthquaketrack.com and which updates and changes regularly.
The New Yorker’s article also cites an Oregon safety policy group that estimates it could take up to 3 months after the quake to restore electricity. It could take another 6 months to fix major highways in the region and a year for sewer services to get back up to speed.
Are these latest sinkholes signs of the an upcoming disaster of epic proportions?
Aerial view of Oregon sinkhole videos taken by local drone hobbyist Kyle Rice
