Sinkholes and caves commonly form in the limestone-rich, karst landscape of Eastern West Virginia. This episode explores the causes of this phenomenon, impacts on buildings and roads, and some surprising stories about the Federal government’s use of classified and declassified bunkers in this region.

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Transcript:

00;00;00;21 - 00;00;29;12
Hal Needham
This past June, a small sinkhole opened up along Route 20 in Hinton, West Virginia. What started as a small but deep hole around six feet across and 30 feet deep continued to grow through the summer and fall, eventually opening up to a massive hole that gobbled up part of Route 20 while extending underneath the police station. The location of this sinkhole impacted a key transportation corridor, which impacted residents both inside and outside the town of Hinton.

00;00;29;25 - 00;00;56;24
Hal Needham
Hey, GeoTrekkers this is Doctor Hal. Welcome to episode 58 of the GeoTrek podcast. This is our first podcast in the Mountain State, the beautiful state of West Virginia. In this episode, we'll be talking about sinkholes, caves, fissures and tunnels, those spaces that can open up underground and impact the built environment if you need to. The podcast Geo Track investigates the impact of extreme weather and natural disasters on individuals and communities.

00;00;57;03 - 00;01;17;19
Hal Needham
Our goal is to help you improve your decision making, risk assessment and communication related to extreme events so you can take action to make yourself, your family and your community more resilient. Hey, before we get into this episode, a big favor to ask our listeners. We'd really appreciate it if you just take a minute to subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast platform.

00;01;17;27 - 00;01;39;06
Hal Needham
Your subscription helps us mark progress, which enables us to make more professional partnerships moving forward and ensures many more episodes of the Geo Track podcast in the future. A little bit about the geography of this episode. I recorded these interviews on the ground in West Virginia the week after Thanksgiving. This is the first episode of a two part series on sinkholes.

00;01;39;07 - 00;02;02;20
Hal Needham
Next week, we'll continue this theme in neighboring Kentucky. The first interview is with Greg Bozo, president and principal engineer at Bozo Forensics LLC. Recorded at his home in Summersville, near the center of the state of West Virginia. From there, I traveled east to Cave Country, recording interviews in Lewisburg and Hinton, where the sinkhole was still the talk of the town.

00;02;03;06 - 00;02;44;08
Hal Needham
Let's start by introducing this week's first guest. Greg Boso is a registered professional engineer in 34 states in Washington, DC and provides civil engineering and investigative engineering services, forensic engineering, insurance claims, defense and expert testimony for building construction. He also has expertize related to commercial, residential and industrial development, as well as stormwater management. His investigative and forensic engineering services range from theory of failure and causation to recommending mitigating actions and preparing opinions of cost to repair, as well as providing reporting and expert testimony during court proceedings in public service.

00;02;44;13 - 00;03;02;23
Hal Needham
Greg serves with the Summersville Fire Department, now serving as the department's chaplain with nearly 42 years of firefighting experience. He is also a former Republican member of the West Virginia State Senate. Representing district 11 from 2015 to 2019. Greg, welcome to the podcast.

00;03;03;08 - 00;03;05;16
Greg Boso
Oh, it's pleasure to be with you, Hal. It's been a while.

00;03;05;16 - 00;03;10;06
Hal Needham
Greg Here we are in your home in Somerville, West Virginia. Beautiful area. I love visiting you here.

00;03;10;11 - 00;03;20;13
Greg Boso
Well, you know, I call it almost heaven. You know, West Virginia has that mantra out there that it's almost heaven, West Virginia. And so why would I want to be anywhere else?

00;03;20;13 - 00;03;28;03
Hal Needham
Oh, the views. Even on one of the top of the ridges, there was a little bit of snow today. And then you're going up and down these amazing mountains. It's a great place to live and it.

00;03;28;03 - 00;03;40;07
Greg Boso
Won't be long before wintertime will be here. And we'll get to enjoy those those scenic opportunities again. Yeah, that's right. You know, the forecast right now with the Willy Worms, it's going to be a deep snow. Deep snow winter.

00;03;40;08 - 00;03;58;21
Hal Needham
I used to do that with my grandma. We look at the wooly worms. Get an idea that you can expect, right? Exactly. You get all kinds of crazy, interesting weather, beautiful landscape here. And today we're going to be talking a little bit about caves, sinkholes, some of these things that may open up on someone's property that they don't want to see, you know, really interesting stuff that happens in this part of the country.

00;03;58;22 - 00;04;25;07
Greg Boso
It really is. And, you know, obviously, when we get to West Virginia, it's got some unique topography, unique situations just because of the nature that the state was set up. But I mean, you know, the eastern part of the state around Greenbrier County, Pocahontas County has those topographies. You go to the to the western part of the state and you get the the farmlands along the Ohio River.

00;04;25;24 - 00;04;38;14
Hal Needham
Greg, you were explaining to me these sinkholes, things like that. There are natural ones and there are manmade ones. Let's start with the natural ones. You talked about cars to me. What does that mean and what's the environment where some of these natural sinkholes can set up?

00;04;38;16 - 00;05;16;20
Greg Boso
Sure. You know, when we talk about karst environment, it's basically limestone, it's mineral solid mineral material that has fractured as a result of the plate tectonics that have occurred, you know, in the geology. But moisture begins moving through those fissures and begins eroding the the limestone typically then there's a reaction also between the water and and the solid mineral, because it's basic, you know, limestone is a basic material and you get acid water that moves through that.

00;05;16;20 - 00;05;37;26
Greg Boso
There's a reaction and begins breaking down that material and creating those those cavernous opportunities. You know, when you walk through those caverns, particularly, you know, in my favorite part of the part of the world here in West Virginia, over around Greenbrier County, you know, you've got several caverns that are public caverns that you can walk through and get to enjoy.

00;05;37;26 - 00;05;48;22
Greg Boso
And the slag. Tyson The stalagmites and yeah, you know, there's calcium formations that occurred over hundreds of thousands of years just are phenomenal to get to enjoy.

00;05;48;23 - 00;06;01;22
Hal Needham
Someone had told me where you find those caves that you can you have that same environment where you can find sinkholes as well. I mean, we love the caves, especially the commercial ones. You can tour them with your family. But then if a sinkhole opens up nearby, that could cause a lot of problems, right?

00;06;01;26 - 00;06;33;17
Greg Boso
Well, yes. And it's because the groundwater has moved through. And as a result, what happens is as the cars as the cars, the environment breaks down, it creates a void underneath the ground surface. You know, you've got your your soils that are overbearing, the the rock. And as the rock goes away and the water continues to move through that, then all of a sudden, you start seeing that soil breaking down and falling into those those caverns, those those holes that are going through that that rock mineral material.

00;06;33;29 - 00;06;39;18
Hal Needham
GREGG Could there be signs that there's a sinkhole or ground movement even before something opens up, like on someone's property?

00;06;39;18 - 00;07;05;25
Greg Boso
And sometimes you can see a depression and be able to see a change in in the environment. And many times it'll be circular and in fashion and you'll see some fissures in the soil surface as that soil is beginning to fall in and coming coming away from where it's stable. Then you're going to start seeing some of those signs.

00;07;06;03 - 00;07;21;10
Greg Boso
But many times, unfortunately, when you know those sinkholes occur, it's catastrophic. It's a catastrophic event. All of a sudden the structure is gone and it just collapses into that into that cavern that's created through the rock.

00;07;21;10 - 00;07;28;18
Hal Needham
So sometimes they do not have the luxury of seeing this deformation over time. It might just be a collapse just instantaneously.

00;07;28;19 - 00;07;50;02
Greg Boso
Exactly. But, you know, many times it'll start as a small, small area and then it begins expanding out. Okay. And so you'll see a continuation over a period of time, maybe several, you know, tens, hundreds of years that you see these sinkholes expanding and and enveloping more land and and topography.

00;07;50;11 - 00;08;08;13
Hal Needham
You brought up an interesting point. You know, sometimes we stereotype a state with a certain hazard. Like I was telling you, when I think of Oklahoma, I think everywhere has this big tornado risk. And people are like, no, it's it's really in this more central and eastern part of the state with with sinkholes and caves. Initially, I was thinking, okay, all West Virginia is kind of in the crosshairs.

00;08;08;13 - 00;08;10;20
Hal Needham
You were explaining some areas are more vulnerable than others.

00;08;10;26 - 00;08;46;05
Greg Boso
Well, they really are. I mean, you know, the eastern part of the state is where the more limestone and which is along the Appalachian Mountains and that's where we had the upheaval during the formation of the of the Appalachian Mountains back year hundreds of years ago, that thousands of years ago. And so you get to moving westward in the state and you get more towards the the sedimentary rock sandstones through the central region of the state.

00;08;46;05 - 00;08;55;09
Greg Boso
And then, you know, obviously you've got the alluvial fan soils along the Ohio River basins and that happens also around the Canal Valley. Yeah.

00;08;55;20 - 00;09;01;05
Hal Needham
That's interesting because it shows there's a real geography to this. It's not just like everywhere has the same risk of a sinkhole opening.

00;09;01;05 - 00;09;10;16
Greg Boso
Exactly. You know, our geography has changed just based on the way that our our continent, our our earth was formed. Yeah. And so which is really neat.

00;09;11;01 - 00;09;24;03
Hal Needham
Gregg, something else you mentioned I thought was interesting is that these things can affect people in any state because sinkholes can also be manmade or caused by construction, utilities, different things like that. Can you explain a little bit about manmade sinkholes?

00;09;24;04 - 00;09;52;00
Greg Boso
Well, you know, when we think about sinkholes, it's all about water movement. And regardless of whether we're talking manmade or whether we're talking about natural water movement affects the way sinkholes are created. The manmade type structures typically occur around constructed works, utility lines, water, sewer that are buried deep in the ground. Water begins moving around because when we put those pipelines in, we change the way the groundwater was acting.

00;09;52;09 - 00;10;17;21
Greg Boso
And we've created a pipeline, if you will, along those conduits for water to move. And so it goes from a point where it's at the highest level. It follows the pipeline typically to a lower location. And as that water moves, it moves the soil around the outside of that pipe creates a cavernous area. And all of a sudden you see the soil structure above that pipeline collapsing in and around it because the soil has been moved away.

00;10;17;27 - 00;10;24;01
Hal Needham
It sounds like you're saying that water can kind of move along these pipes. It can open up space. And all of a sudden when space is open, you can get a collapse.

00;10;24;06 - 00;10;32;10
Greg Boso
Well, it does. And, you know, as water moves, it erodes the soil, displaces the soil around the pipeline and creates that that void area.

00;10;32;22 - 00;10;45;12
Hal Needham
I've seen this in different cities and towns, sometimes even on roads. You'll see a sinkhole open up and and the Department of Transportation will come out, put cones around it before cars fall in. I mean, this can be a big impact on people's lives, right?

00;10;45;15 - 00;11;08;12
Greg Boso
Oh, certainly. You know, we see a lot of it happen, you know, particularly in large cities where the the water is moved around the outside of the pipeline and all of a sudden around these large pipelines, storm sewers and things like that, you get these massive craters that many cars and people have a tendency to fall into.

00;11;08;20 - 00;11;20;03
Hal Needham
And Greg, this is really interesting because it brings home for our listeners, no matter where they are, that this could impact them, especially if they live in a city or town. You don't have to live in eastern West Virginia to have a problem with sinkholes potentially.

00;11;20;05 - 00;11;44;06
Greg Boso
Or in any other state where you have topography such as Kentucky, Tennessee, you know, there are those regions that also have that limestone type mineral with that with that affect. But yeah, when we talk about manmade, anywhere you have a metropolitan area, you have the potential for constructed works to allow water to move around the outside of it and create those sinkhole opportunities.

00;11;44;11 - 00;11;58;03
Hal Needham
And I'd imagine once you get displacement of soils, this could cause problems with foundations. It could cause problems on the built environment. I know you have extensive experience doing forensic engineering, and I think you've even done some work with with sinkholes impacting structures, right?

00;11;58;07 - 00;12;28;17
Greg Boso
Exactly. And I'm doing one case right now, for instance, that involves a sinkhole. It's revolving around a large diameter sanitary sewer in the western part of our state here in West Virginia. And, you know, the sinkhole was a fact that other properties. And so, you know, it will find that wherever there is a natural water movement around the outside of that, it happens in Florida, it happens in New York, it happens in Philadelphia.

00;12;29;11 - 00;12;33;08
Greg Boso
You can go into the western part of the country and see the same similar events.

00;12;33;12 - 00;12;50;05
Hal Needham
Greg, I know you're background's forensic engineering, not necessarily like, you know, constructing these things in partnership with the city, but trying to figure out if something went wrong, kind of putting the pieces together. Do you know, are there practices that cities, towns can do to to be more careful or to avoid some of these problems from happening in the first place?

00;12;50;11 - 00;13;36;16
Greg Boso
Well, first is to understand what what the water conditions, the groundwater conditions are within those various areas. Sometimes, you know, engineers will look at those types of situations and and design preventative measures around pipelines to create barriers for water, to move around the outside of the pipe. Sometimes we have to look and do do things like that. So you'll see many of that, those types of structures, particularly where you have dam impoundments, water impoundments will put those collars in and what they are is just a flat piece of material that's placed around the pipe that creates an opportunity for water to come against it, but makes it very difficult for it to get around it

00;13;36;23 - 00;13;39;28
Greg Boso
and pipe that material, the soil material away from.

00;13;40;00 - 00;13;43;17
Hal Needham
So that kind of blocks this water from running along that underground pipeline.

00;13;43;17 - 00;14;03;14
Greg Boso
It does. And so, you know, those are the types of things that engineers typically would take a look at when when they're looking at building that built environment for civil works, you know, underground piping for sanitary sewer or storm sewers or even water and sewer, gas lines.

00;14;03;14 - 00;14;14;25
Hal Needham
Yeah. So it sounds like you can kind of get out ahead of this and say this could be a problem area if we don't build for this, maybe there are things that they can do to kind of prevent or reduce the chance of a sinkhole opening up.

00;14;14;25 - 00;14;21;18
Greg Boso
And they anticipate what could could be a problem down the area, down the road, you know, for the area, yeah.

00;14;21;20 - 00;14;31;01
Hal Needham
Greg, I have to ask you, your favorite cave in West Virginia. There's one stand out that people, if they're traveling through with their family, they should check it out.

00;14;31;17 - 00;14;50;25
Greg Boso
There's the cave that I remember more than anything else is the old caves up at Smoke Hole, which is in the northern northwestern part, the northeastern part of the state up in Pinal County. And as a child, those were the first caves that I ever went into. And those those memories. Yeah.

00;14;51;04 - 00;14;52;05
Hal Needham
The adventure of it. Right.

00;14;52;06 - 00;15;01;03
Greg Boso
But, you know, I've been in the cave over it and lost caves over in in Greenbrier County. Those are great, great opportunities to take advantage of as well.

00;15;01;06 - 00;15;09;08
Hal Needham
Oh, that's great. I know there are a lot of caves down here and I'm hoping to maybe explore one or two as well. Greg, any last thoughts or insights to share with our listeners before we wrap up?

00;15;09;13 - 00;15;34;24
Greg Boso
No. You know, really how I appreciate the opportunity to just sit and have a conversation and, you know, to talk about sinkholes, but many people don't want to think about them. Right now. But depending upon where you were, you're going to be living. You know, obviously you want to take those into consideration and it may have an impact on your on your insuring for sure, you know, on your insurance or when you are locating in those types of areas.

00;15;34;24 - 00;15;49;28
Hal Needham
I know a lot of our listeners from Pennsylvania down through both Virginia's Kentucky, Tennessee, this is a broad area. And then our friends in Florida, too, I know when a lot of people think hazards with Florida, they're thinking hurricanes. Yes. But some of the biggest sinkhole areas in the country are also in Florida.

00;15;50;00 - 00;15;50;22
Greg Boso
Oh, that's something for.

00;15;50;22 - 00;15;54;18
Hal Needham
People to be aware of. Yeah, exactly. Greg, appreciate you taking time to come on the podcast.

00;15;55;02 - 00;15;55;26
Greg Boso
My pleasure. Okay.

00;15;56;21 - 00;16;17;02
Hal Needham
Okay. Thanks, Greg, for sharing those insights from Summersville. I drove east to Greenbrier County, West Virginia, the heart of Cave Country in the eastern part of the state. My first stop was the Lost World Caverns, where I was able to get underground on an adventure, a self-guided tour of their cave. So a long time ago, a West Virginia farmer discovered a hole in the ground on his farm.

00;16;17;12 - 00;16;36;28
Hal Needham
He didn't quite know what to make of it. And so, according to a staff member at what Lost World Caverns, this farmer was just using this hole to dispose of trash for a while when the hole never seemed to fill up. He became curious if perhaps it contained a large cave. And on July 11th, 1942, he brought four cave explorers out to his farm.

00;16;37;17 - 00;16;57;27
Hal Needham
When J.L. Wingfield was lowered into the cave on a rope, his feet did not hit a solid bottom until he was lowered 120 feet through that hole. So imagine this. You're a cave explorer. Three of your buddies are up above the ground. They're holding on to a rope and you're being slowly lowered into this cavern. You have no idea how deep it is.

00;16;57;28 - 00;17;15;28
Hal Needham
That's some of the excitement of cave exploration. And he didn't hit the bottom until he got 120 feet down. And he was the first person to see what today is. Lost Worlds, caverns, pretty exciting stuff. So this hole in the top, it actually had a grapevine that was growing down through it. So they called a grapevine cave at first or the grapevine entrance.

00;17;16;08 - 00;17;43;20
Hal Needham
Today they call this hole in the top of the cave. The natural entrance. But this is really cool. So Lost Worlds is a limestone cavern. You can explore it. It's a thousand feet long, 300 feet wide, 120 feet high. And most of the cave is more than 100 feet below the surface of the earth. Cool thing on it is that as you're touring the cave, at one point, you actually get to stand underneath the natural entrance and look up 12 stories, about 120 feet high.

00;17;43;26 - 00;18;02;25
Hal Needham
It looks like a point of light way above you. And that's the natural entrance where people came in originally in the late 1960s. A tunnel was brought in from the side which enabled this to open up as a commercial cave. Just really cool stuff and it was really need to kind of explore this limestone environment that dissolved. Again, keep in mind, limestone is basic.

00;18;03;04 - 00;18;26;12
Hal Needham
A lot of the rainwater is slightly acidic. And so it can really dissolve these limestone areas and create these caverns. A few other factoids about the cave environment. So the temperature of a cave approximates the annual average temperature of the air above that location. So the temperature at last world cavern stays about 51 degrees Fahrenheit or 11 degrees Celsius year round.

00;18;26;21 - 00;18;45;02
Hal Needham
Does it matter if it's winter, summer? The temperature down below in the cave does not really change. So a cave in eastern Canada, by contrast, would be noticeably colder while a cave in Florida or a salt dome in Louisiana would be considerably warmer. So, again, the indoor temperature doesn't really the temperature in the cave does not really change year round.

00;18;45;02 - 00;19;08;15
Hal Needham
It approximates the annual average temperature above the ground. Most caves also experience a kind of an interesting environment where air circulates through them. We wouldn't really call it weather because it's below ground, but think of a cave environment with circulating air. And this is interesting because especially if there are multiple openings on a cave, you're going to see air circulating, especially when the weather's hot above ground or cold above ground.

00;19;08;23 - 00;19;33;27
Hal Needham
So imagine a really cold, warm morning, a cold winter morning in West Virginia. The temperature outside is only 11 degrees. But again, in the cavern, it's 51 degrees. So there's a big difference in temperature there. Warmer air is generally less dense and it wants to rise. So imagine on a morning like that when the air inside the cave is 40 degrees warmer than the air outside, you're going to get air rapidly rising through that hole in the natural entrance.

00;19;34;03 - 00;19;58;09
Hal Needham
In fact, a sign in the cave said on a very cold winter morning, quite a plume of warm, moist air can be seen billowing from the natural or the grapevine entrance. And so this causes air to circulate all throughout the cave, which is pretty cool. There's basically a natural ventilation there. So really interesting stuff. I'd recommend visiting a cave if you're anywhere in the Appalachians, if you're down in Florida, even places like New Mexico, have Carlsbad Caverns.

00;19;58;09 - 00;20;19;10
Hal Needham
Take your family, your kids, your grandkids to a cave. It's a great place to go. And on a hot summer day, it's nice and cool down there in the cave. It's a great place to explore. With kids from Lost World Caverns, I drove to into the town of Lewisburg, the county seat of Greenbrier County, West Virginia. I was looking for evidence of any sinkholes on the landscape or stories from locals about sinkholes and their impacts.

00;20;19;17 - 00;20;41;07
Hal Needham
Boy, did I stumble across some really interesting stories in this part of the world as I walked around vibrant and festive, Lewisburg, which was already decorated for the holidays, I came across four gentlemen conversing in Robert's antiques, who shared fascinating stories about caves and sinkholes in their town. So, yeah, so we're here in Lewisburg, West Virginia, to talk about caves, sinkholes, all this good stuff.

00;20;41;07 - 00;20;50;25
Hal Needham
And there's like way more stories that I thought were possible. So when we were talking about you guys were talking about Wal-Mart for one, right? So there's a cave under the parking lot and actually under Wal-Mart. Yeah.

00;20;51;16 - 00;20;52;18
Speaker 3
Basically. Okay. So.

00;20;53;01 - 00;20;59;17
Hal Needham
Okay, I'm sorry. What's your name again? My name's Howard, by the way. Yeah, so. So it's Casey. And that's. That's a parking lot and part of Wal-Mart.

00;20;59;17 - 00;21;06;02
Speaker 3
Right underneath the ground, there's pilings that go all the way to the bottom of the cave and come up. And it's basically sits on a ridge pillar.

00;21;06;17 - 00;21;08;13
Hal Needham
Basically, Wal-Mart sits on a cave here, and.

00;21;08;29 - 00;21;10;08
Speaker 3
Yeah, the whole town sits in the cave.

00;21;10;26 - 00;21;14;06
Hal Needham
I mean, as anyone explored it, you know, like how how deep it is or anything.

00;21;14;15 - 00;21;23;20
Speaker 3
I have no clue how deep it is. They're there's to people. Yeah. Explore underneath the caves that crazy got it down to the corner storage area.

00;21;25;00 - 00;21;29;14
Hal Needham
But you said it was like super expensive just to build even the parking lot because it was so unstable.

00;21;29;20 - 00;21;36;00
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. And then they just redid City Hall. They had to pump a bunch of grout in there to keep it from falling into the cave.

00;21;36;01 - 00;21;41;01
Hal Needham
So how often do you hear like something opens up? I mean, pretty frequently. Oh, what.

00;21;41;01 - 00;21;42;06
Speaker 3
Would you say, man? I mean.

00;21;43;04 - 00;21;43;23
Speaker 4
Every couple of.

00;21;44;16 - 00;21;46;06
Speaker 3
It's like every few months. Yeah.

00;21;46;15 - 00;21;52;26
Hal Needham
So that's how I got down here. Someone said, go to the asylum. They thought there was a sinkhole over by asylum. So that's kind of how I ended up here downtown.

00;21;53;03 - 00;22;03;18
Speaker 3
Everybody's out all right? Yeah, it's on the back side of the asylum. If you're staying on the back porch. Yeah, you look back to your right, and that's the cave I was telling you guys all the way from here down to Fort Strength.

00;22;03;18 - 00;22;11;17
Hal Needham
Yeah. So that's crazy. So you were talking about insurance. Usually that's not covered, but if someone has a, I guess, an addition onto their normal policy. Right?

00;22;11;23 - 00;22;17;05
Speaker 3
Correct. Right. Yes. And we just had a problem with that just the last three years.

00;22;17;25 - 00;22;26;15
Hal Needham
So some people I know, like in hurricane country, a lot of people assume everything's covered. Right. And all of a sudden it's like they didn't actually read their policy. And it's like, no, it clearly is a.

00;22;26;23 - 00;22;32;22
Speaker 3
No, no, it isn't in our policies. But yes, you can have enhancements too, and smart to do that in this country.

00;22;32;22 - 00;22;39;15
Hal Needham
I got you. So would you say this is an area of West Virginia with more caves than others? I mean, I saw there was a bunch of even like commercial caves around here.

00;22;40;15 - 00;22;47;12
Speaker 3
I would say it's probably the most in. Yeah, yeah. Southern West Virginia with the caves. Yeah. Limestone country. Yeah.

00;22;47;19 - 00;22;52;23
Hal Needham
So is so pretty much where you get the limestone, you get the cave sinkholes, that kind of thing.

00;22;53;00 - 00;22;55;11
Speaker 3
Yeah, I would say I sort of regret my mother.

00;22;55;28 - 00;23;10;27
Speaker 4
Geology sort of is second life. No, second life here in Lewisburg. Yeah. You look at a building and it's pipe. It looks like the cut off like a pie in the front of it fell in years ago. So the front.

00;23;10;27 - 00;23;12;13
Hal Needham
Of the building just fell into a sinkhole.

00;23;12;16 - 00;23;28;23
Speaker 4
And so they made it. So now it's just the one front. And right across the street there's a cavern there and there's a large grate and they kind of keep repairing that all the time and they use the same cars in there just to fill the hole.

00;23;29;17 - 00;23;32;28
Hal Needham
So the holes just kept growing and they put cars in just a few years ago.

00;23;32;28 - 00;23;42;28
Speaker 4
They did. But now with the way things are, they've been putting these metal grates and a lot of iron in there and concrete to hold it up.

00;23;43;12 - 00;23;51;11
Hal Needham
Okay, we got it. We got to tell our listeners about this story. What's the what's the deal with the CIA and the post office?

00;23;51;11 - 00;24;20;14
Speaker 4
A guy I knew wore a postal uniform during the anthrax scare and the lady across the street hit him on the head with a bag of flour. And the FBI came out like in a matter of minutes. And black cars with machine guns. And they say that saying black here is a place where they go under the ground and that's where they have their facility.

00;24;20;14 - 00;24;22;26
Hal Needham
And nobody else like the secret bunker.

00;24;22;28 - 00;24;24;01
Speaker 4
Secret bunker.

00;24;25;02 - 00;24;28;16
Hal Needham
Was the idea he was maybe dressed up like postal, but he was really CIA.

00;24;29;00 - 00;24;33;29
Speaker 4
In uniform. Yes. And it was really wild because that lady's crazier now.

00;24;34;25 - 00;24;40;09
Hal Needham
So that was maybe proof, like, okay, maybe there are some CIA folks around here. Maybe in the bunker.

00;24;40;20 - 00;24;41;16
Speaker 4
No question.

00;24;41;16 - 00;24;46;13
Hal Needham
There around and there was that bunker as well for Congress right in Greenbrier. Is that.

00;24;46;18 - 00;24;47;09
Speaker 4
Greenbrier?

00;24;47;21 - 00;24;56;28
Hal Needham
But so I just learned about that today. And some people were saying word kind of got out, you know, it was supposed to be this secret bunker. Right. But then people all kind of knew about it, right?

00;24;56;28 - 00;25;09;16
Speaker 4
Well, the neighbor of my son, he worked there and he was a technician for TVs. And he didn't even know how to work on a TV, couldn't even he barely could turn went on.

00;25;10;23 - 00;25;12;29
Hal Needham
So he worked there to help construct.

00;25;12;29 - 00;25;19;02
Speaker 4
That he hid that he was involved in hiding that bunker from other people. So nobody knew about it.

00;25;19;21 - 00;25;25;28
Hal Needham
And that was that under the Greenbrier. Under the Greenbrier. That could fit like over a thousand people, right?

00;25;26;03 - 00;25;30;01
Speaker 4
The majority of his life since the bunker was built.

00;25;31;08 - 00;25;40;02
Hal Needham
Yeah. So that's fascinating. I guess partly you have a lot of open space caverns here, but then you're not that far from Washington, DC. You know, if you're on a on a helicopter or something like that.

00;25;40;08 - 00;25;54;08
Speaker 4
The government's all over us. If you look at my back room, I have one of its pieces of equipment hanging from my ceiling. It has big eyes. Go look for yourself. Take a picture. What is it? Go look and see. Wait.

00;25;54;08 - 00;26;00;26
Hal Needham
So we're looking at this thing. It has, like these eyes on it, these lenses. And this is like a video surveillance government.

00;26;00;26 - 00;26;03;13
Speaker 4
Government? Yeah, the government put it in here.

00;26;03;23 - 00;26;06;26
Hal Needham
So they kind of want to surveillance on the people coming in.

00;26;07;03 - 00;26;07;29
Speaker 4
Coming in and out.

00;26;08;07 - 00;26;11;23
Hal Needham
Is it partly because of this town and because of the security issue?

00;26;11;24 - 00;26;23;05
Speaker 4
You know, it just seems like there's important people that come in here. A lot of our clients are wealthy and that's what they want to know. They want to know what they're doing. That's wild.

00;26;23;13 - 00;26;26;22
Hal Needham
And that kind of relates maybe with some of these bunkers and different things, perhaps.

00;26;27;13 - 00;26;29;02
Speaker 4
Without a question. Yeah.

00;26;29;21 - 00;26;31;18
Hal Needham
That's right. I thought you were pulling my leg at first.

00;26;31;18 - 00;26;33;27
Speaker 4
But yeah, it's like this.

00;26;34;12 - 00;26;56;17
Hal Needham
Really interesting camera with these eyes on it for four eyes and four different directions. And so I never got a sun, so I was blown away by the extent to which underground openings impact a town like Lewisburg. Imagine living in a town that's basically built on top of large caverns. What struck me the most was the effort locals have put in to stabilize the ground underneath them.

00;26;56;25 - 00;27;17;01
Hal Needham
Whether that means building a large caisson or a frame structure underneath a place like Walmart or filling areas with dirt, concrete or even cars, sometimes it sounded like they were just trying to get anything they can to fill the ground and eventually stabilize it. The angle about the federal government using underground space as bunkers caught me completely off guard.

00;27;17;12 - 00;27;36;00
Hal Needham
But this makes sense in an area with such a history of using and creating openings like caves and tunnels in a place not that far from Washington, D.C.. As the crow flies, our conversation and Roberts Antiques touched on the topic of the bunker under the Greenbrier Resort. Check this out. Do a Web search on it. It's a fascinating story.

00;27;36;08 - 00;28;07;18
Hal Needham
This was a massive Cold War era bunker built to house all 535 members of Congress. Should a Nuclear War Break Out? Ted Gup Article The Last Resort, published on May 31st, 1992, in The Washington Post, led to the declassification of the bunker under the Greenbrier Resort. Today, the resort offers bunker tours to guests and visitors. Their surveillance camera system in the back of Robert's antiques in Lewisburg was odd, unexpected and almost seemed too outrageous to be true.

00;28;07;27 - 00;28;35;16
Hal Needham
But there it was in the back room, a large chandelier with four yellow looking eyes looking in different directions, other interactions I had in town led me to believe that all this surveillance in modern day classified bunkers might actually be legit. My hotel receptionist told me that her father warned her against going to her favorite hill for watching sunsets anymore as he suspected a bunker had been excavated below it from Lewisburg, an interesting town that seems to hold a lot of secrets.

00;28;35;26 - 00;28;56;02
Hal Needham
I drove to Hinton the next morning to investigate the massive sinkhole that it impacted the town and drawn much attention from the media. I encountered and I encountered the same cold just before I entered town and was able to interview a concerned local resident named Christie, who lived just down the street from the sinkhole. My name is Howell, so I'm an extreme weather and disaster scientist.

00;28;56;02 - 00;29;05;19
Hal Needham
I'm in West Virginia just doing stories on sinkholes. I was in Lewisburg and they said, go to Hinton. There was this big sinkhole that opened over here by that police station. And so when you live right down the street from that, right?

00;29;05;26 - 00;29;06;13
Speaker 5
Yeah, I do.

00;29;06;19 - 00;29;07;15
Hal Needham
Yeah. What is your name?

00;29;07;24 - 00;29;09;06
Speaker 5
My name's Christie Affleck.

00;29;09;13 - 00;29;14;21
Hal Needham
Christie, I appreciate you taking time. So this is a big sinkhole. You said it opened up, I guess, in June. So like over the summer?

00;29;14;28 - 00;29;42;12
Speaker 5
Yeah, it opened up sometime in June. And it was small. It was only about six feet across and said it was like 30 feet deep. And it remained that way for several months. And here, maybe a month and a half ago, it started getting bigger and like two weeks ago they put the bridge over it and they closed down the whole road for a weekend like Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

00;29;42;24 - 00;29;48;07
Speaker 5
And so in order to get to town, we're like the grocery stores and stuff took 45 minutes.

00;29;48;16 - 00;29;54;25
Hal Needham
When all of a sudden they closed down that road and you live right on that road. So you had to find a whole different route to go and get your groceries and things like that.

00;29;54;26 - 00;30;08;27
Speaker 5
Yeah, we did a because you would have to go all the way back down Route 20 and cut up ramp and go across the mountain and then come back down on the other side of town.

00;30;09;06 - 00;30;09;27
Speaker 4
Wow. So that's it.

00;30;09;28 - 00;30;14;06
Hal Needham
So that's a good point. Just by changing one road all of a sudden for locals, that changes everything.

00;30;14;11 - 00;30;26;00
Speaker 5
Yeah, it made it so the people that it made the hospital way farther away. It made you fear gasoline stuff that you might need from town. You're like, Well, you better grab all your stuff because you're not going nowhere for days.

00;30;26;00 - 00;30;36;05
Hal Needham
And right here, you're right on the edge of town. But there's really one road in and out. So that really was an inconvenience big time. And it could really be a hazard if you had to get to the hospital or needed medical.

00;30;37;02 - 00;30;49;00
Speaker 5
It could really cause a problem there and hopefully that doesn't happen again. Honestly, I was a little worried that there was something else wrong with the whole with this new equipment out here and that that road may be blocked off.

00;30;49;07 - 00;30;52;26
Hal Needham
I see. So now this new equipment came out just recently, like even this morning.

00;30;52;26 - 00;30;53;12
Speaker 5
Right now.

00;30;53;20 - 00;30;54;04
Hal Needham
I gotcha.

00;30;54;04 - 00;30;55;10
Speaker 5
So I'm standing out here.

00;30;55;10 - 00;30;58;29
Hal Needham
Yeah. So you as a local, like, what's going on? Is it gotten worse or what are they doing over there?

00;30;59;00 - 00;31;18;18
Speaker 5
Yeah, I'm wondering what they're doing over there, really? Because this great big excavator here was not there. I heard it coming in. That's why I came outside. And I also had a truck full of supplies. And my guess is that this hole is getting bigger. They need to shore it up again and maybe that bridge is in trouble.

00;31;19;02 - 00;31;37;08
Speaker 5
And that's that's a big concern for us. My boyfriend works in Tazewell, Virginia, and so he has to drive around. It takes him an extra 45 minutes and he's already driving an hour and a half to get there. Right. And so that sort of thing is a problem.

00;31;37;15 - 00;31;53;25
Hal Needham
You know, I'm learning something here, too, because in some parts of the US everything's so flat. And so to find an alternate route, no problem. It's a grid system. But here y'all are kind of the main roads are right along the river. And if you block off one of those roads, that can cause it's not like you have a big grid of all these available roads.

00;31;54;00 - 00;31;55;02
Speaker 4
You have maybe one way in and.

00;31;55;02 - 00;32;09;04
Speaker 5
Out, just small roads going over the mountains, but most of them are just one lane and some of them are not in good shape and some of them don't exist anymore. Roads that existed when I was a teenager don't exist anymore. Probably a dozen of them just in the county.

00;32;09;28 - 00;32;14;02
Hal Needham
Probably especially really rural roads going over the mountain, something little tiny roads.

00;32;14;08 - 00;32;20;26
Speaker 5
These roads scare people from other places. They're straight up and down. Huge, huge curves.

00;32;20;26 - 00;32;32;06
Hal Needham
And I'm Christie where any of the locals here are concerned that that the hole and some of the instability of the ground could come over and impact any of these houses around here or was a concern just about the road?

00;32;32;06 - 00;32;53;24
Speaker 5
We think it's mostly about the road. We've had a couple of sinkholes before down on the lower road, a little bit further into town. That was one in the eighties and one in the nineties. And I managed to fix those. And the road is fine. And there's also a place up here where they've condemned a half a dozen houses where the hillside was sliding down.

00;32;55;08 - 00;33;06;17
Speaker 5
So we have the mountain like gravity, and gravity is pulling the mountain down and we have to shore it up or the houses down. Stay there.

00;33;06;22 - 00;33;16;10
Hal Needham
Yeah, yeah. And where we're at right now, I mean, you can see mountains really all around town here and a river going through especially. I appreciate you taking time. I hope everything gets shored up here and hopefully the road will stay open for y'all.

00;33;16;15 - 00;33;19;01
Speaker 5
Yeah, I hope we continue to have a road too.

00;33;20;18 - 00;33;43;24
Hal Needham
So let's talk a little more about this sinkhole. According to the West Virginia dot, the failure of a 90 year old drain under Route 20 in Hinton caused the sinkhole, which formed originally in June, as a hole that was about six feet wide and 30 feet deep. A West Virginia Department of Highways crew installed a 120 foot temporary culvert and fill material under the road.

00;33;44;00 - 00;34;09;24
Hal Needham
But heavy rains from Hurricane Nicole on Friday, November 11th, 2022, washed out the fill and made the sinkhole worse. So this phenomenon fits into that category of sinkholes that Greg Bozo was talking about that are influenced by humans forming along drains, pipes or culverts. I want to draw attention to the fact that it was rain from the remnants of Hurricane Nicole that washed out the fill and made the sinkhole worse.

00;34;10;02 - 00;34;36;03
Hal Needham
Many people are really surprised to hear about flood impacts from hurricanes in inland states like West Virginia. But hurricane remnants have produced tragic floods in the history of mountainous states like West Virginia, Virginia and Pennsylvania. In fact, Hinton, West Virginia, where we saw the sinkhole, is not that far in a straight line from Nelson County in the western part of the state of Virginia, site of the deadliest natural disaster in Virginia history.

00;34;36;12 - 00;35;02;14
Hal Needham
In 1969, the remnants of Category five Hurricane Camille, which originally made landfall in Mississippi, dumped as much as 30 inches of rain in the Virginia mountains, creating catastrophic flooding that killed 113 people, according to Noah. So these inland floods, the remnants of hurricanes, maybe they're a cat three or four or five on the coast by the time they reach West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, they might just be a tropical storm or a depression.

00;35;03;02 - 00;35;24;27
Hal Needham
They can dump tremendous rainfall that produces a lot of flooding in this case. Fortunately, we did not hear about any fatalities from Hurricane Nicole's rains in West Virginia, but it did wash out the fill and made the sinkhole worse, which affected a lot of people. After talking to Christie, I went over to the sinkhole for the first time to take a look at it myself and strike up a conversation with a local man named Bush Quinn.

00;35;25;19 - 00;35;36;10
Speaker 4
They don't want the county to pay for it or the state paid for it, and they made up their mind what they're going to do. They got as far as the building. Yeah. Then they got a gas line where they don't know what to do with it.

00;35;37;23 - 00;35;40;16
Hal Needham
So there was a gas line was right by the sinkhole or impacted.

00;35;41;01 - 00;35;54;09
Speaker 4
I think it yellow line returns gas line. Yeah but the one thing make up your mind what I do they said it's going to be the 1st of January before they do anything with it. So did that affect gas.

00;35;54;09 - 00;35;56;09
Hal Needham
Coming into the city? Were they able to shut it off?

00;35;57;27 - 00;36;10;10
Speaker 4
I Don't think it's in Lafayette now. I don't know. They they put a lab out there on the when this sinkhole first started. They might change that that gas might not be coming through there. Now, they might be talking around.

00;36;10;16 - 00;36;12;25
Hal Needham
When the sinkhole started, did they close the road.

00;36;13;03 - 00;36;34;09
Speaker 4
Right away or did it take a while? It took a while. They moved the road over first and then they had a you see that nearby light up for one lane and then they started coming over toward the lane. They reviewed that white mark is on their side and buried right there. They were using that lane and then it started coming over toward it.

00;36;34;27 - 00;36;49;21
Speaker 4
So they put that bridge in there. When did they build the bridge? What? Last weekend. Oh, really? So that's new. Yeah, yeah. Now start sinking some more. Yeah. So we see the.

00;36;49;21 - 00;36;53;13
Hal Needham
Day a bunch of work crews, a bunch of machinery was out here like say.

00;36;53;13 - 00;37;08;06
Speaker 4
Yesterday or did they just come into that. He come in here when they built the bridge. I got you this work for the day, I guess, is to work through just today. I don't think they know what to do. I see. So it sounds like it's very dynamic and changing pretty quick.

00;37;08;06 - 00;37;16;25
Hal Needham
And you have to think on your feet kind of and the building. So this is partly under the road, but partly under the police station. And so I'm imagining they move the police out of there, right?

00;37;16;26 - 00;37;25;04
Speaker 4
Yeah. They have moved it down or what is that building, that technology building right now, what you're going to see, they're going to do something there now.

00;37;25;18 - 00;37;29;17
Hal Needham
And it sounds like there's a question here on what they're going to do with the building. Maybe they're going to have to figure that out.

00;37;30;02 - 00;37;37;14
Speaker 4
Well, they're going to be on down here. They're going to see a pipe goes all the way down through there in the the.

00;37;37;17 - 00;37;39;28
Hal Needham
Sinkhole happened along the pipe, right? Yeah.

00;37;40;20 - 00;37;41;01
Speaker 4
Yeah.

00;37;41;23 - 00;37;44;00
Hal Needham
I appreciate you taking time. My name is Howard.

00;37;44;00 - 00;37;45;21
Speaker 4
What is your name was going.

00;37;46;17 - 00;38;08;29
Hal Needham
So there I was talking to Bush Quinn about the dynamic nature of this sinkhole as work crews were busy working on it and cars lined up at a makeshift red light on one side of the temporary bridge then crossed over together in a line. Bush indicated that he felt the entities involved in organizing and responding to the sinkhole did not know what they were doing, or at least that there was a lot of uncertainty about how to move forward.

00;38;09;08 - 00;38;35;05
Hal Needham
A quick housekeeping note on how we record in select field interviews on the Go Track podcast. When possible, we prioritize interviews with professionals who have expertize and who are sharing factual information. I generally set up these interviews long before I arrive in a location. For example, I selected Greg as the key interview of this podcast because of his strong reputation in the community and his decades of experience working in civil and forensic engineering.

00;38;35;16 - 00;38;56;01
Hal Needham
After interviewing Greg, I wanted to float a bit through West Virginia, see the impacts of sinkholes and caves for myself and talk to locals. I heard about Hinton's sinkhole when I was in Lewisburg and popped over the next morning to check it out for myself. I approached someone wearing a bright colored vest on a work crew for an interview and asked them, Would you have a few words about the sinkhole and what you're doing?

00;38;56;09 - 00;39;13;12
Hal Needham
They turned me down for that interview. I can't blame them. Workers were working really hard to fix the sinkhole problem, and big media, like the major TV networks, had already conducted interviews on site. So in that context, the best I could really do was to stand by the sinkhole, kind of check it out for myself and talk to locals about the impact.

00;39;14;00 - 00;39;31;19
Hal Needham
But Bush's viewpoint that the response is uncoordinated, I think it probably would not match the local government perspective if I could have gotten an official interview that morning. And it's certainly not the position of GEO podcast that we're, you know, going in and and maybe saying things that make the local government look bad or make things look uncoordinated.

00;39;31;25 - 00;39;53;10
Hal Needham
Nonetheless, we often do try to share interviews with locals on many of our podcast because they give a different perspective from what we may hear on the mainstream news. Also, insights on the impacts of hazards, like what Kristy said about this made her trip in the town 45 minutes longer. That may be very different type of perspective than what we hear from the official messaging coming out from federal, state or local government.

00;39;53;11 - 00;40;12;14
Hal Needham
In other words, these conversations with locals, they add color, they add perspective and context to the hazard and a way that it gets a little bit beyond just the official messaging, if you will. So anyway, that's a little perspective on how we do these field interviews, where possible. We're going to try to talk to professionals and experts, but we also will put the mic up and talk to locals sometimes as well.

00;40;12;14 - 00;40;27;23
Hal Needham
But it does not represent geo tracks like Official Position, if that makes sense. We're just trying to connect you with the locals and with experts as much as possible so you get an idea of what it felt like on the ground. We really want to take you there and have you feel like you were right there in these different disasters and hazards.

00;40;28;03 - 00;40;51;21
Hal Needham
Hey, let's talk a little bit about this temporary bridge that was set up on the edge of the sinkhole. This is really interesting. The West Virginia D.O.T. website says that the prefabricated steel bridge is similar to Bailey Bridge's developed by the British military during World War Two and requires assembly on site. Amazingly, the assembled it installed this bridge in about 24 to 48 hour time frame over a weekend.

00;40;51;21 - 00;41;10;00
Hal Needham
So great job there. I know the locals were really excited to have the bridge, to feel more confident about driving past the sinkhole and, you know, to get that done quickly. It was pretty amazing. Well, I left a sinkhole and had to find wi fi in downtown Hinton along my way. I found Hinton to be an old railroad town with a large historic district.

00;41;10;21 - 00;41;28;00
Hal Needham
While some parts of town almost felt like a ghost town devoid of human activity. I did find some signs of life and rebirth, including a few shops that had opened up like the Otter and Oak. This establishment has, a bright and clean clothing store downstairs and a cafe upstairs where I conducted my last interview with a woman named Myra.

00;41;28;14 - 00;41;46;22
Hal Needham
She shared perspectives that might not be apparent unless you were a local living there in Hinton, West Virginia. I'm here in Hinton, West Virginia, and talking to two wonderful ladies who shared a little bit about the impact of the sinkhole. Myra, you were sharing some of the local impacts. A lot of people may not realize if they didn't know the town well.

00;41;46;22 - 00;42;19;08
Speaker 5
Yes. The schools I know had trouble getting the busses past this sinkhole. And so for at least one week or several days, they would bus the children to one side of that sinkhole and put them on vans that came from the church, local churches and some of the other local organizations that had lighter vehicles. And they would carry the children past the sinkhole and then put them on the bus to take them on to the school, which is three or four miles beyond the sinkhole.

00;42;19;10 - 00;42;20;11
Speaker 5
So, I mean, that's amazing.

00;42;20;11 - 00;42;28;24
Hal Needham
You think of weight of a school bus is a lot more than a car. And then all those precious children, you could see where people would say, let's not take a chance. Let's drop them off on one side and pick them up on the other.

00;42;29;09 - 00;42;50;19
Speaker 5
That's correct. And then I also know that the library runs a bookmobile from Hinton Pass that area and down to that part of the county. And they were not willing to take the bookmobile past the sinkhole, although now that there's a bridge there, I think that they're back on schedule with their bookmobile.

00;42;50;19 - 00;42;50;28
Speaker 4
Right.

00;42;50;28 - 00;43;00;17
Hal Needham
Obviously, you're concerned about the driver, but then you're thinking probably about the weight of the vehicle. Right. And when the sinkhole is kind of encroaching there on the road. So you can see why it would be a little bit dicey.

00;43;00;21 - 00;43;08;22
Speaker 5
Yes, the sinkhole was definitely encroaching on the road. Things were really hanging over and sinking down. And it's it's incredible.

00;43;09;06 - 00;43;17;13
Hal Needham
Once the bridge went in and it sounds like it went in fairly recently, did that give people a little more confidence, do you think, to maybe drive past there? Did that change things at all?

00;43;18;07 - 00;43;32;20
Speaker 5
I haven't been down to look at it. It's only been in since this past weekend, I guess. And but, yes, I believe that they're running the busses past it and people are feeling much more secure about the fact that it's not going to fall in with them.

00;43;33;04 - 00;43;57;25
Hal Needham
Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much for taking time. You live in a beautiful historic town. It's great with the sun coming out, the view of the mountains, but a really cool little town. And thanks for sharing these stories. Well, certainly. Well, my conversation with Myra wrapped up my interviews about sinkholes in West Virginia. We covered so much ground on a new topic never featured before on the podcast that I wanted to go back through and just give four bullet points to summarize what we learned on this episode.

00;43;58;04 - 00;44;23;21
Hal Needham
Number one, Greg Bozo helped us understand that sinkholes can form from both natural and manmade causes in cars. Landscapes that have a lot of limestone. Sinkholes tend to form water, dissolves the limestone underground. These can form along natural waterways, but they can also form along pipes, culverts or drains. Number two, West Virginians have adapted to a life that includes living on top of caves and sinkholes, especially in the eastern part of the state.

00;44;24;03 - 00;44;47;14
Hal Needham
Towns like Lewisburg have extensive caverns underneath them, requiring people to either fill the holes or create structures like frames or caissons to stabilize the ground. Number three caves, sinkholes, fissures, tunnels and bunkers have found their way into the local culture of eastern West Virginia. In addition to commercial caves, bunkers have been developed by the federal government for various reasons.

00;44;47;25 - 00;45;10;04
Hal Needham
The Cold War bunker under the Greenbrier Resort is now declassified and open for tours, but other bunkers may still be classified in the news. Number four, sinkholes can have a detrimental impact on buildings and roads in a place like West Virginia. Roads between towns often hug the rivers because of all the mountains in West Virginia providing the main transportation route between towns.

00;45;10;13 - 00;45;36;10
Hal Needham
A sinkhole along a road like Route 20 on the edge of Hinton obstructs a pinch point. A key area that really is crucial for local transportation. When this pinch point has a sinkhole, it can add as much as 45 minutes on a trip just into town. Because locals must now find alternative routes over winding mountain roads, this is very different than a flat landscape or a city with gridded streets where traffic could be easily redirected.

00;45;36;21 - 00;45;54;23
Hal Needham
So it's really amazing to learn about the wide reaching impacts of one hole in the ground that could impact people for at least tens of miles around in all directions. So really interesting stuff there that you wouldn't really understand unless you got on the ground there in West Virginia. Well, hey, thanks for coming along on this adventure to the mountain state of West Virginia, everybody.

00;45;55;01 - 00;46;16;26
Hal Needham
Don't miss next week's episode when we do basically a companion episode in neighboring Kentucky. We'll be going live to the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in the western part of the state, to learn about the impacts in response to a sudden sinkhole that opened up there in 2014, gobbling up eight vintage sports cars. That's a fascinating episode that you don't want to miss.

00;46;16;27 - 00;46;35;14
Hal Needham
It was recorded live on the site there at the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky. Special thanks as well to our marketing and developing team there. Kenneth Baker, Anderson, Jeremiah Long, Christopher Cook, Amy Wilkins and Courtney Booker. This is Dr. Hall signing off until the next episode of the GEO Podcast.

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