海角大神

Residents were evacuated and cars were relocated after a sinkhole opened up on a sidewalk in front of a聽building block in Northwest Washington D.C.

Initial reports said the hole located聽at the 1900 block of Biltmore Street NW is about 25 feet deep. But police later described the hole as just three to four feet deep. It isn't expanding into the street,聽Washington City Paper reports.聽

The police spokeswoman told the Washington Post聽that officers did not measure the hole and that it's not clear where the 25-foot-deep estimate came from.

Fire officials said the sinkhole is affecting what looks like a waterpipe that may be in the process of collapsing. Meanwhile,聽Washington D.C.'s Transportation Department are investigating what caused the hole to develop.

The D.C. sinkhole was the fourth one in the US to make headlines after the one that killed a sleeping man in Florida earlier this month.

On Sunday, a sinkhole estimated 25 to 30 feet wide and 10 to 12 feet deep formed underneath an eastern Pennsylvania house, forcing the owner to vacate it.

A Missouri man survived an unexpected fall into a bell-shaped sinkhole which measured聽18-feet deep and 10-feet wide聽while walking on the fairway of an Illinois golf course on Friday.

One week earlier, Tampa, Fla., had its second sinkhole in a week, about 12 feet round and 5 feet deep. It is located just聽two miles from the聽30-feet wide and 60-feet deep that demolished a Seffner home and swallowed a man while he slept on March 3.

As science journalist Stephanie Pappas wrote in 2010,聽sinkholes, according to the US Geological Survey, are most common in Florida, Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. The ground in these states is rich in sedimentary rocks. When groundwater flows through these rocks, it erodes them, creating caverns that can suddenly collapse.聽

Earlier this month, the Monitor's Patrik Jonsson described how human activity can contribute to sinkholes.