Lake vanishes overnight in Russia
Last Updated Sat, 21 May 2005 22:00:08 EDT
CBC News

MOSCOW - Villagers in central Russia are mystified by the sudden disappearance, overnight, of the town's lake.

Russia's NTV channel showed a muddy basin where the lake once was, in the village of Bolotnikovo, 250 kilometres east of Moscow. The name of the village translates roughly as "boggy."

Local officials say the lake was probably sucked into an underground cave system.

NTV interviewed local fishermen who had gone to the lake early Friday morning only to discover that something had "pulled the plug" on the lake.

"I looked and there was no water. I thought: 'Oh my God, what's going on?'" said one of the fishermen on TV.

Emergency crews were called out to search the lake bed to see if anyone had been sucked under. Lakeside trees appeared to have been dragged down with the water.

Safety officials say it's still dangerous to be on the lake bed.

Local official Dmitry Klyuev said several houses had been swallowed up under similar circumstances 70 years ago.


ah, the wonders of geology. This must be alarming for the fishermen, to put it mildly. Hopefully there will be some aid for them, until something can reasonably replace fishing as earned income...
This is not the kind of occurence that one would ever suspect.


edit- forgot the link- http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/200...ake_050520.html

Odd when it happens, but not totally unprecedented. One time in Louisiana oil-drillers struck a salt mine below, and water flooded the mine. Of course, when water floods a salt mine, it dissolves the salt, and this particularly large salt deposit was soon able to suck down the entire lake. The lake eventually refilled, but the salt mine and oil drilling operations were shut down leaving most of the town unemployed.

Hmm... oodles of reclaimed lakebed... can someone say, good farmland?

or a mud packing plant for french facial kits