Gateway to the underworld in Guatemala?

There’re definitely more than a thousand words that come to mind at the sight of this gripping picture:

Large, circular and seemingly bottomless sinkhole in middle of neighborhood in Guatemala City [click for full size [1600×1066]]

From the Dot Earth blog at the New York Times:

This astonishingly unnerving photograph was posted today on the Flickr.com feed of the Guatemalan goverment and shows a seemingly bottomless sinkhole that opened up on Sunday in Guatemala City as a swath of Central America was drenched by tropical storm Agatha. Click here for the high-resolution version, if you dare. The storm only briefly hit tropical storm strength on Saturday as it came ashore from the Pacific Ocean over the weekend, but the death toll had risen to 115 at last count. Here’s a street-level view.

As incredible as this is, it’s even more chilling when you recall that a very similar (if not identical) event occurred back in 2007, swallowing 3 poor souls. I don’t know what the hell is laying underneath Guatemala City but chances are, after two freakishly identical events of this sort, I’m not setting foot on the ground there for a while. All joking aside, though, our thoughts and sympathies go out to those ridiculously unfortunate folks who lost their lives in these events and those they leave behind.

Freaky.

(via Pharyngula)