Corvette Museum Disaster
 

It's all over the news that a giant sinkhole opened up in the middle
of the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green and swallowed up 8 corvettes.
We can now add this to things to worry about when displaying your car!

From U.S.A. Today


BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — A sinkhole formed Wednesday under the National Corvette Museum here, swallowing eight cars, according to its executive director.

Some time before 5:30 a.m. CT, the sinkhole started to form, authorities believe. By 5:39 a.m. power in the museum went off and police were called, Executive Director Wendell Strode said. The incident originally was thought to be a fire.

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When emergency personnel got to the museum, they discovered a sinkhole 40 feet wide and 25 to 30 feet deep, Strode said.

"It's pretty significant," he said.

Bowling Green — about 60 miles northeast of Nashville, Tenn., and 100 miles southwest of Louisville, Ky. — is at the edge of a karst region where caves, springs and sinkholes are common. The main entrance to Mammoth Cave National Park is about 30 miles northeast of the city, but that cave system has more than 400 miles that have been explored.

The National Corvette Museum will celebrate its 20th anniversary in August. Of the eight cars that fell into the hole,the museum owned five and General Motors owned three. GM's Corvette plant where present-day Corvettes are manufactured is across a highway less than a half mile from the museum.

Employees at the museum still are working on a list of cars involved in the incident, which occurred inside the facility's iconic spire called the Sky Dome, Strode said.

Emergency personnel allowed museum staff to remove only one car in the Sky Dome, the only surviving 1983 Corvette, he said. It had not fallen in the hole.

Engineers have been called in to assess the situation.

"Before we do anything, like remove the other cars, we want that assessment so we know if there's been any structural damage to the Sky Dome," Strode said.

The museum is open Wednesday but the Sky Dome will be off limits, he said.

"We'll try to get back to business as usual as soon as we can and keep moving forward," he said.

A monetary estimate of damage done to the museum and the vehicles involved had not been determined early Wednesday.

Are they fracking in that area or have they drained any underground water reservoirs if there are any around there?

For the "it didn't happen unless there's pictures" crowd:

http://www.blogcdn.com/slideshows/im...nkhole-2-1.jpg
http://www.blogcdn.com/slideshows/im...nkhole-1-1.jpg

It's my understanding that the area of the museum is covered with underground
caverns, and a friend of mine who displayed his Corvette there for a few months said that
there is an old Giant sinkhole near the Museum building that sits near the parking lot.

The layout
http://www.torquenews.com/sites/defa...tte_museum.jpg

New photo
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-conten...te-599x345.jpg

The way the Vette crowd is, I can see that in a few years from now we'll see:

"1 of 8 Corvettes with certified and documented sinkhole damage. Only $10,000 more than a non-sinkhole damaged vehicle."

I feel kinda bad for that black/red '61-'62 Vette. The C4's on the other hand, what a good place for them!

Thank goodness they were just Corvettes......

some rare Vettes down the drain....heres a link!

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/02/12...cmp=latestnews

HOLY ****!!!

GET A MACHINE & GET THEM OUT!!!

Not so fast there Bossman! ;)

Take a closer look at the broken beams and piers hanging "in the air" not so sure anyone else should even stand where the photos were taken till shored up and safety tied off in case of continued collapse...

Gives a "hole" new meaning to "survivor car"

Per the Fox story:

From the museum

I haven't liked Vettes since 1967, so in my opionion, there was only one loss, the 62'.

I just told my son (Chevy nut), I ain't going to Bowling Green with him anytime soon.

Seriously guys, you can't look at this and not ache a little!

'84 PPG 'pace car' whoopeee.........

I could care less about the black '62.
Only one I'd be interested in is the '93 Ruby Red 40th.

The 62 is a loss. The others are too but if I never saw them, meh. Those cars don't do much for me. But I get what you're saying. Is does make you cringe a bit.

Best quote from Corvette Haters thread:

Damn guys. Why the snark comments? Don't care what make, model, steel, glass, plastic...

This sucks. Glad no one was injured and no personally owned cars were lost. I know of more than one GTO club that has had cars on display at the Corvette museum throughout the years as specialty displays.

Those poor cars.

I hate how I see this story on other car specific forums, and they all comment on how "at least they're not such and such cars". Really? So if they were cars that you cared about then it would be a bad thing, but because its not its just whatever.

Sorry for the loss of any collectible car,

BUT

Lets start with the jokes:


What do you call 8 corvettes at the bottom of a hole?

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A good start!


:o

Act of God..... NO insurance coverage for you.

And The Pontiac God is smiling..... "I don't get mad, but I just got even with Chevrolet". :D

I've had several corvettes. Hate to hear the bad news. I'm sure most of us know, we shouldn't worry much about material things anyway.

Hate to think that if something happen to one of my Pontiacs that someone would be laughing or saying "it's just a Pontiac." Someone, somewhere treasured those cars, even if they were owned by the museum.

What if it were the Pontiac Museum, all you crap artists would change your tunes then. Have a little self control and empathy for the hobby. Sheesh.

Here yo can see the 62 clinging for dear life... Of the four I can see, Ill bet the 62 and the 09 Blue Devil might be ok with minimal damage. Weird how you cant see any of the other four. They must be buried. Now that I see pics, as they say, the s**t just got real. It is sad. Just glad it happened in the middle of the night and not during a tour.

Here are pics from the museum website. https://plus.google.com/photos/10414...569?banner=pwa

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-E...o/IMG_0301.JPG

Drone footage. Start at 1:50. You can see six of the cars

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5FG9...1LzacC&index=2

If you go to the museum website you can watch a lot of video footage. Including the surveillance video that caught the whole thing happening. Its clear that six of the cars are visible. Two must have been buried.

There's also a video out there from a security camera showing just the beginning where 2 Vettes dropped in the hole first.
Our company built a plant just south of BG in 1993. Multiple sinkholes opened up during construction....when they start, it doesn't take long for them to get very large and very deep. Had the same thing when we built down in Talladega....watched a 100 foot wide sink hole form before our eyes in about 45 seconds. Scares the hell out of you because you don't know when it will stop.

Yep, Thanks Old blue.. Security Camera footage!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k05V...Q3hW12km1LzacC

No sign of the orange or white cars that fell in first!

The live web cams at the museum are still active. There are a bunch of new C7 models waiting for new owners to pick them up as part of the Museum Delivery option. I imagine they all have very tight sphincter muscles right now!

BJ

I think those cars are gone... Just too dangerous to risk someone's live to pull em out.

Years ago a hole opened up near here that swallowed a bulldozer, it took a month to find it. I don't think they ever did recover the operators body.

I have a corvette and pontiacs and I hate to see any cars get damaged like that.

Wow. Just 'wow'. Weird. Who did the geotech on the site?

It's really annoying to me they call those "drones" they are RC-radio controlled planes,not drones for gods sake.

Not to worry, they'll pull 'em out and fix them up good as new.

"...Bowling Green is in western Kentucky, an area with geology — full of karst — that has created an abundance of caves, springs and sinkholes.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.230...21103386261231

http://apps.carleton.edu/reason_pack...ges/952308.jpg

Take another look from the outside - note the location of the detention pond and "former" sink hole
http://www.corvettemuseum.org/planni...parkingmap.jpg

And the inside
http://cdn.speednik.com/files/2012/06/NCM-Club.jpg

The red C4 on the edge of the hole might end up going in before it's all over.

The building is going to have to be raized. They could get the exposed Corvettes out of there with a big helicopter.
I can only see five cars in the helicopter video.
There must be a third buried.

You can see the white car for a second in this video just below the black 62

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0im-l411P1M#t=15

Number six is under the Blue Devil . You can only see a wheel and a little bit of the bumper

I agree as to the building may need to be raised...and Thxs to Drag Star posting this video the cars are the least of engineering worries. Watch it again and note the deep crevasses and canyon terrain.

Brings to mind - time to order new study of the entire Bowling Green Factory facilities for the same conditions.

Fortunate this occurred when no one was touring inside and no loss of life accompanied this event.

http://motorgearheads.com/uploads/ga...2_25_26908.jpg
http://www.tireunit.com/info/wp-cont...te-museum1.jpg

You are right, I think this is very sad.

Off topic, but that building's exterior is hokey as hell. Who's bright idea was it to paint it taxi cab yellow with a red spire? Supposed to be a stinger? Weren't those cars named after a sea creature, not a bee?

More fodder for the "God has a sick sense of humor" advocates. While this a true shame, mostly for the one of one cars, it is life. People die and we react less sometimes. It is just "stuff". (See George Carlin's rap on "stuff"). I am sorry it happened, but it all goes to dust someday. More than the car loss, it should remind us of how we live on a planet in a state of perpetual change.

See more at: http://automastersofbg.com/?page_id=230

How true, and how we take for granted living on a world in perpetual motion with tectonic plates shifting, volcanoes erupting, waves crashing and check this collection of

Sinkholes Around The World http://abcnews.go.com/International/...bceb4ff05158b4