New Sinkhole On Patong Hill Road

[LivinginKata]

Friday, October 23, 2009

New sinkhole on Patong Hill road

The state of the repair work on Patong Hill road at noon today.

PHUKET CITY: Conditions on the already-treacherous Patong Hill road took another turn for the worse yesterday, when another sinkhole appeared just meters from a similar cavity that was hastily repaired in late August.

Patong Municipal official Sompong Jiumtau said municipal workers put traffic cones around the crevasse as soon as it was first noticed before dusk yesterday.

The hole had enlarged considerably by morning, he said.

Municipal workers under orders from Mayor Pian Keesin were busy today excavating and refilling the hole.

Workers from the Highways Department are expected to join the effort soon, he said.

Sources at the municipality told the Gazette after the first sinkhole appeared that two drainage pipes once channeled runoff under the low-lying stretch of road.

Installation of an electric power pylon in the area obstructed flow to one of the pipes, causing excess runoff to flow under the pavement, resulting in erosion, according to the source.

Drainage has long been a problem on the road, where sheets of water flow like a river across the surface during torrential monsoon-season rains.

Remarkably, a section of the road near where the sinkholes emerged would need to support a large concrete overpass if one option of the Patong Tunnel plan, now under study by Bangkok-based consultants, gets the go-ahead. – Atchaa Khamlo

-- Phuket Gazette 2009-10-23

[FarangBuddha]

These sinkholes are a reminder for all those who have built or bought houses or stay in hotels/resorts built on the hillsides on the west coast of Phuket. These mountains are geologically not very sound and it's very likely at some point that during a period of heavy sustained typhoon rains, they will give way and massive mud/landslides may ensue resulting in large scale property damage and loss of life. The recent typhoon storms in Taiwan and the Philippines and the resulting mountain landslides and loss of property and life should be a wake-up call.