Sinkhole cuts through Daisetta community

Sat, May 17 2008

— By Mary Meaux and Amy Moore
The Orange Leader
A massive sinkhole, possibly caused by the collapse of a salt dome, opened up in the small town of Daisetta on Wednesday.
By mid-afternoon, an 18-wheeler, a drilling platform and other oil field equipment had been consumed by the giant crevice.
“Apparently all of Daisetta is built on a salt dome,” Angie Taylor, teacher at Hull-Daisetta High School and life-long Daisetta resident, said via phone. “It started sinking this morning and now it's two football fields wide and 100 feet deep. There are three helicopters flying around right now."
H-D High School is located about one-quarter of a mile from the site, a court clerk with Daisetta Police Department said. Traffic was being rerouted from FM 770 to FM 834 near the school as officials arrived to survey the damage.
Taylor said residents were told to monitor the radio to see if school would be in session on Friday.
“The hole is still growing. It’s a quarter of mile from the school on the other side of road,” the teacher said. “The hole would have to spread across the road to get to the school.”
There is no official word on what caused the sinkhole to appear near DeLoach Vacuum in the rural town which numbers only around 1,000 residents.
The geological event did not go unnoticed by students. Taylor said a group of kids left the campus with plans to drive their four-wheelers “as close as they could get” to the site.
Daisetta isn’t the only area with salt domes and the possibility for a sinkhole. The Big Hill, or Spindletop, site, and High Island have areas of salt domes close enough to the surface to possibly sink if certain conditions arise.
A salt dome is an underground arch of sedimentary rock with a mass of rock salt at its core. The dome may collapse when, as the salt moves upward, comes into contact with the water table.
Lamar University’s Jim Westgate, professor of earth and space sciences, learned of the Daisetta sinkhole Wednesday afternoon.
“The real question is what triggered the collapse,” he said. “And if the salt dissolved away from the cap rock, is it supported again?”