14 DAY TRIAL // A giant sinkhole opened up in the city of Ridder in eastern Kazakhstan and swallowed an entire house in seconds. The tenants, a young mother and her newborn son, miraculously managed to escape unharmed as they fled the house moments before it vanished into a huge hole in the ground.
Anastasia Tatarnikov thought a powerful earthquake struck her house when everything started trembling around her, but she soon realized it was a different force that was making her house vibrate.
“I was watching TV and then it started flickering and the lights started swinging. I opened the front door and saw a massive pit appearing in the ground,” she said.
Luckily, Anastasia managed a narrow escape shortly before her home was engulfed by the massive sinkhole that formed underneath it. When she realized the danger, the 28-year-old woman grabbed her newborn baby Kiril and fled, saving both her and the boy's life.
Several homes in the area have completely disappeared into the massive pit.
According to Daily Mail, the sinkhole appeared as a result of mining work in the city of Ridder. 120 homes are considered to be at risk in the area, and around 480 people have been evacuated. The hole reached 70 meters (229 feet) wide and 30 meters (98 feet) deep, and it appears to have stabilized at the moment.
The mother and son are now safe, but Anastasia says she is still in shock after the incident. They are now homeless and wait for the local officials to do something about the situation. Authorities have promised to help her with covering the loss, but so far she hasn't heard anything from them.
“I still can't believe that I have lost everything. I don't have any of the official paperwork from my passport through to my son's hospital documents, with his toys and all our clothes. Everything is gone,” the young mother said.
So far, representatives from the Kazzinca mining company, which is in charge of the LLP Altyn Tau East mine, have declined to comment on the catastrophic sinkhole.
Sinkholes are depressions or holes in the ground caused by some form of collapse of the surface layer due to erosion or water drainage. They may be formed gradually or suddenly and are more common in chalky environments. Sometimes, they can be triggered by human activity, like mining, extraction of groundwater and subsurface fluids, sewer collapses and more.
