News: Sinkhole opens up in Trudeau Airport Parking lot, swallows cars

Un stationnement s’est affaissé en partie, vendredi après-midi, près de l’aéroport international Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau, à Montréal.
Selon l’aéroport, le stationnement en question est réservé à des employés, mais l’incident n’a fait aucun blessé.
Un bloc d’asphalte d’environ 3 m par 4 m (11 pieds par 15 pieds) aurait cédé, chutant d’environ 1 m (4 pieds).
Deux véhicules ont été partiellement engloutis. L’un deux a plongé dans le trou formé dans la chaussée, deux de ses roues ne touchant alors plus le sol.
Les autres automobiles dans le stationnement ne semblent pas touchées.
L’endroit est présentement sécurisé et les services d’urgence sont sur place.

Click to expand...

MONTREAL—Two cars were damaged on Friday afternoon after a large hole opened up in the middle of an exterior employee parking lot near Montreal-Trudeau International Airport.
While no one was injured, police and fire were at the scene as the back end of a car pointed skyward. The front of the car fell into a five metre by three meter sinkhole just after 1 p.m.
The lot is located on Cote-de-Liesse Rd. near the airport’s multilevel Skypark.

Read more: http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/two-cars...u-airport-parking-lot-1.1216450#ixzz2OxwttX7b
​

Click to expand...

jmacman12 said:

To save everybody a headache, I'll tell you why this happened before it blows up.

You see, Montreal's roads are generally quite shit for a number of reasons.

The underlying factor, being that we're cheap.

Since we're cheap, we don't make the roads very well (4x as thin american roads, 2x as thin as most roads in the rest of Canada)

Additionally because we're cheap, we don't buy the best of materials to create the roads.

This is the main issue why our roads are shit.

The reason being, is because we import a lot of limestone from Northern manitoba (despite the fact that we have it in major abundance here) since it is cheaper. This "cheap" limestone is used to process cement. However because it is generally impure, containing many metals and limestone aggregates, it is HIGHLY susceptible to chemical weathering. Side note: this is why our bridges are falling.

Lime and limestone aggregates are used for the creation of roads, don't get me wrong, however because the concentration of limestone within the slurry is low due to the many impurities, they just use more of it. This in turn raises it's concentration and frequency of impurities, making it a lot more susceptible to chemical weathering.

Now that you're aware of that, I'll explain something else.

Montreal's geologic history is quite unique. You see about 20 000 years ago, towards the end of the last ice age, Montreal sat under 2-3km of ice. Once the glacier had melted, due to the weight of the glacier, the earth around montreal was significantly lower than it was today and this meant that salt water from the atlantic came in and flooded everything creating the Champlain Sea. Salt water means sea life, and a lot of it. This sea life ends up dying, sinking to the bottom and forming limestone over the next 10 000 years. This is why the geology of Montreal and it's surrounding area are of limestone.

Fast forward to today and the underlying geology of today and we still have a lot of limestone underneath us.

Considering that it is spring, water is melting and all the salts and chemicals we use on our roads and are getting into the water table.

The water table is rising, however it is contaminated with chemicals such as the salts and other crap.


This is where the three things come together: the rising water table (that is contaminated) mixes with the underlying limestone, slowly weathering it away (since it is susceptible to chemical weathering) then the road above it starts to weaken because it too is being chemical weathered due to it's impurities and poor construction and the next thing you know, it collapses.


In nature this is normal and is actually how caves form but it also demonstrates as to why some caves can be dangerous.

When this naturally occurs, not from anthropogenic processes, it is called a karst landscape and they are quite beautiful.


TL;DR: Rising contaminated water table chemically weathers underlying rock and shitty roads to form a sinkhole because Quebec is too cheap to afford geologists or to create proper roads.

Click to expand...

jmacman12 said:

You see, Montreal's roads are generally quite shit for a number of reasons.

The underlying factor, being that we're cheap.

Since we're cheap, we don't make the roads very well (4x as thin american roads, 2x as thin as most roads in the rest of Canada)

Additionally because we're cheap, we don't buy the best of materials to create the roads.

This is the main issue why our roads are shit.

Click to expand...

jmacman12 said:

To save everybody a headache, I'll tell you why this happened before it blows up.

You see, Montreal's roads are generally quite shit for a number of reasons.

The underlying factor, being that we're cheap.

Since we're cheap, we don't make the roads very well (4x as thin american roads, 2x as thin as most roads in the rest of Canada)

Additionally because we're cheap, we don't buy the best of materials to create the roads.

This is the main issue why our roads are shit.

The reason being, is because we import a lot of limestone from Northern manitoba (despite the fact that we have it in major abundance here) since it is cheaper. This "cheap" limestone is used to process cement. However because it is generally impure, containing many metals and limestone aggregates, it is HIGHLY susceptible to chemical weathering. Side note: this is why our bridges are falling.

Lime and limestone aggregates are used for the creation of roads, don't get me wrong, however because the concentration of limestone within the slurry is low due to the many impurities, they just use more of it. This in turn raises it's concentration and frequency of impurities, making it a lot more susceptible to chemical weathering.

Now that you're aware of that, I'll explain something else.

Montreal's geologic history is quite unique. You see about 20 000 years ago, towards the end of the last ice age, Montreal sat under 2-3km of ice. Once the glacier had melted, due to the weight of the glacier, the earth around montreal was significantly lower than it was today and this meant that salt water from the atlantic came in and flooded everything creating the Champlain Sea. Salt water means sea life, and a lot of it. This sea life ends up dying, sinking to the bottom and forming limestone over the next 10 000 years. This is why the geology of Montreal and it's surrounding area are of limestone.

Fast forward to today and the underlying geology of today and we still have a lot of limestone underneath us.

Considering that it is spring, water is melting and all the salts and chemicals we use on our roads and are getting into the water table.

The water table is rising, however it is contaminated with chemicals such as the salts and other crap.


This is where the three things come together: the rising water table (that is contaminated) mixes with the underlying limestone, slowly weathering it away (since it is susceptible to chemical weathering) then the road above it starts to weaken because it too is being chemical weathered due to it's impurities and poor construction and the next thing you know, it collapses.


In nature this is normal and is actually how caves form but it also demonstrates as to why some caves can be dangerous.

When this naturally occurs, not from anthropogenic processes, it is called a karst landscape and they are quite beautiful.


TL;DR: Rising contaminated water table chemically weathers underlying rock and shitty roads to form a sinkhole because Quebec is too cheap to afford geologists or to create proper roads.

Click to expand...

HeadBanger said:

Jmac: using his fancy post secondary education to tell us MTL is a giant shit hole lol

Click to expand...

MANIC MECHANIC said:

Well done sir.

Click to expand...

Camry90 said:

Jmac:
Where do you get your info from? Very interesting. I would like to read it.

Click to expand...

silvertsi said:

These are all true and one reason why they were done was an attempt to sustain employment, Quebec has very high unemployment and years back politicians thought building the roads in this way would not only save a lot of money at the time but create many jobs to maintain these shit roads, now fast forward their plan has severely back fired the province is falling apart it cannot be built/fixed fast enough to keep up with the deterioration of more roads and infrastructure and no money is saved because politicians and corrupt construction are pocketing millions. So this in turn is making them continue their cheap ways because of the massive demand for repair which will create a giant vicious circle.

Vive le Quebec

Click to expand...

DoucheVader said:

Good post!

I was just gonna ask who is dumb enough to import karst limestone concrete aggregate, but then I remembered this is Quebec. It's kind of amazing they managed to build hydro dams that haven't collapsed...

Basically they'll eventually have to open up construction bidding to Ontario companies who know what the hell they're doing.

Click to expand...

public-threat said:

the roads in quebec are shit because the liberals botched them for good constructions contracts for the family,the airport is another story though. this usually happens in baghdad but quebec.....

Click to expand...