Sinkhole erodes street, morale

BAGHDAD — During two tours totaling 26 months, Maj. Alfred Williams has dealt with insurgents, terrorists and lawless militias. But a giant sinkhole in a main street of one of Baghdad’s most dangerous neighborhoods has him stumped.

“When I look into the hole, I just want to shoot myself and fall into it,” he said, frustrated beyond all measure.

It all started in July.

The 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Stryker Brigade Combat Team had just taken control of a section of Baghdad”s fiercely Sunni and violent neighborhood of Dora.

Their mission: to clear out al Qaeda in Iraq elements, neutralize Shi’ite extremists, secure the streets and make the place livable once more for the roughly 20,000 Iraqis there.

Then came the abyss.

“The hole started, as best we can tell, with an IED [bomb] blast,” said Maj. Williams, operations officer for the Stryker team.

“We think the IED was placed under the road where the main lines of water and sewage run, so when they blew it, they broke two main water lines and one sewage line,” Maj. Williams said, a wad of chewing tobacco parked in his lower lip.

This particular section of Dora is a lower-middle class Sunni area just south of the Tigris River, built atop an old flood plain of fine, almost silty earth.

Mixed with water, the soil turns into sticky soup.

The first time the Stryker team saw the hole, it was about the size of a refrigerator. Figuring it was just a bomb crater and unaware there were burst pipes underneath, they drove their large 20-ton vehicles around it while patrolling the streets.

But on July 17, when the hole swallowed a Humvee, the combat team realized there was a bigger problem.

“We brought a Stryker up and pulled it out of this giant hole, and now it’s even bigger. It’s like 20 feet deep and full of water,” said Maj. Williams.

Dozens of phone calls and several meetings later, the Americans signed a contract with a local Iraqi man to pump out the water.

“He pumped for four days, and the water level decreased about two inches,” Maj. Williams said.

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