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Jake Brigstock
Sep 23, 2024
The driver of a combine harvester is reported to have died after a sinkhole swallowed their vehicle
East2West News
A farmer is reported to have died in Siberia as one of two sinkholes that opened and widened around the same time swallowed a combine harvester.
The driver is understood to have died after a crater 35ft deep swallowed the vehicle and it landed on its cabin in Russkiy Melkhituy village in the Irkutsk region.
The cause of the sinkholes opening up is not known.
An onlooker reportedly said: "The combine harvester is lying with its entire load, its full weight, on the cabin. The hole is larger in diameter on the inside than on the outside."
There's another crater around 400 miles away at a ski resort that's already known as a 'Gate to Hell' and it's said this crater deepened and widened at a similar time to the one in Russkiy Melkhituy.
It's close to a number of holiday homes but no casualties have been reported.
The original hole there opened up on top of an iron-ore mine in December 2022.
It comes after a study found that a permafrost 'megaslump' in Siberia that's known itself as the 'gate to hell' is expanding because of climate change.
The Batagaika crater was first discovered in the 1960s and has been continually expanding for the last 60 years, tripling in size from 1991 to 2018 and is now the biggest permafrost crater in the world, according to a report from FRANCE 24.
It's so big it can even be seen from space.
It started out as an "insignificant ravine", according to FRANCE 24's Julia Sieger, before turning into a "tadpole-shaped slump that covers 200 acres, is one kilometre long and, in some areas, is 100ft deep".
That's because of the thawing of permafrost, which is the part of the ground that is permanently frozen.
When that is warmed up, the ice that cements the subsoil melts and turns into water, causing subsidence.
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