Surveillance video shows moment when 100-foot-wide sinkhole swallows Alton, Illinois soccer field

A sinkhole swallowed bleachers, a light pole and 100 feet of soccer fields at Gordon Moore Park in Alton, Illinois on Wednesday.

Surveillance video showed the moment the sinkhole opened up and an area where benched players would sit during games disappeared beneath the earth.
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[KSDK]

"Mike Bush has the night off"

[PeterParker-dfce]

"What caused the ground to give way"

Couldn't POSSIBLY be the underground mine.

[zaxpage]

The news man says he was told its safe out there. Yeah by the same people who said it was safe just a day before the collapse.

[rander]

Who's going to let their kid play soccer on this field ever again regardless of what a mining inspector says?

[Wayzor_]

This is how it starts and then the Molemen attack.

[pirobotbeta]

"The Miners got out safely."
That tells me that a group of people had first-hand knowledge of a mine in the process of collapse.
It also tells me that nobody on the surface was warned...not the Cops, not Emergency services, not the School.
The operators of the mine knew something bad was going down, but said nothing.

[TheMrPeteChannel]

Who built a soccer field over an active mine?!

[MrthWave]

One week before our church was going to sign off on buying 7 acres in Huntsville, AL, I-565 had a large sinkhole collapse right by the property. Limestone erosion was the culprit...no mining activity. We did a geological survey and passed on the purchase, thankfully.

[TiredMomma]

😮 So, how can someone know if they're walking above an underground mine shaft? How common is it to have a public place above mine shafts?

[NineteenEighty]

I'm from Southern Illinois and played on that field twice in High-school. This is absolutely crazy to me.

[griplimit]

The fact that the light pole was completely gone is scary! If anyone was there they would be dead for sure.

[cchawk]

Building over a mine?!?! What brilliant group thought that was a good idea?

[SoldierPoet]

What went wrong? You're digging out large cavities underground and the surface became unstable. What did you think was going to happen?

[kava]

I swear she said, "My bush has the night off." 😂

[omi_god]

The issue that really needs fixing is to get rid of that awful artificial "turf". The pungent, smelly off-gassing from that stuff is horrible.

[iblackfeathers]

notice that they casually mention there is an underground mine halfway past the video. that's an important detail they could have started off by saying. the sink hole didn't sprout out of nowhere.

and as others have commented, whose bright idea was to put a kid's sports field on top of an underground mine?

[TheOtherDerek]

When and why did we abandon grass fields? What are we supposed to do with all this unnecessary waste?

[johnmartlew]

This is not a sink hole. It’s a mine collapse.

[Icehso]

A hole under the field needed to be filled in...nature and physics stepped in to do the work. But now we have a putting green that a blind man can sink a putt.

[stevendutton]

Limestone, water erosion and bad mining practices is my opinion.