Sinkhole at the National Corvette Museum - Lateral-g Forums

SSLance · #1 02-12-2014, 11:22 AM

A massive sinkhole that has opened up at the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky has swallowed at least eight cars.

The museum said the sinkhole, which the Bowling Green Fire Department estimates to be around 25-30 feet deep and 40 feet wide, opened up early Wednesday morning.

"This is going to be an interesting situation," Museum Executive Director Wendell Strode told the Bowling Green Daily News, noting that a structural engineer is at the Bowling Green facility to evaluate the damage inside its Sky Dome section.

Six of the cars in the sinkhole are owned by the museum; two others are owned by General Motors.

"It is with heavy hearts that we report that eight Corvettes were affected by this incident," the museum said in a press release.

The museum said the cars are a 1993 ZR-1 Spyder and 2009 ZR1 "Blue Devil" on loan from General Motors; a 1962 Black Corvette; 1984 PPG Pace Car; 1992 White 1 Millionth Corvette; 1993 Ruby Red 40th Anniversary Corvette; 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette and a 2009 White 1.5 Millionth Corvette.

Strode told the Courier-Journal that emergency personnel allowed museum staff to remove the only surviving 1983 Corvette, which was at risk of joining the other cars in the sinkhole.

“Before we do anything, like remove the other cars, we want that assessment so we know if there’s been any structural damage to the Sky Dome,” Strode told the Courier-Journal.

The area around the sinkhole is closed to visitors, but the rest of the museum remains open as of Wednesday morning.

An estimate of the cost of the damage done to vehicles and the museum has not yet been determined.

No injuries have been reported and Bowling Green city spokeswoman Kim Lancaster told The Associated Press that this appears to be the first incident of its kind at the property.

Bowling Green is also the only place where General Motors builds Corvettes. The city sits in the midst of Kentucky’s Western Pennyroyal area, where many of the state’s longest and deepest caves run underground, according to The Associated Press.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/02/12...cmp=latestnews

**glassman** · #2 02-12-2014, 01:28 PM

Wow.

Oh where do we start on this one?

"They were filming Oceans 31 and decided to steal older Corvettes when the tunnel digging went all wrong."

"Ford engineers did the soil engineering for the skydome"

"I was wondering where all that tranny fluid was going?"

seriously though, what are the odds?

SSLance · #3 02-12-2014, 01:44 PM

There will be lawyers...

BMR Sales · #4 02-12-2014, 01:46 PM

It's not like the Museum was down here in Florida where we have Sinkholes everyday.

Che70velle · #5 02-12-2014, 01:52 PM

Wow. That is sickening.

hifi875 · #6 02-12-2014, 02:37 PM

They had my car on display there a couple of years ago. Hate to see this. It was posted on twitter early this morning and I was like WHAT?. Who knows whats gonna happen. They are building a really nice road course next door and got a lot of really good things going on.

Tuske427 · #7 02-12-2014, 07:43 PM

Here's a newslink video:

http://www.whas11.com/video/featured...245260151.html

Glad they were able to save the only remaining '83 Vette.

Rod P · #8 02-12-2014, 09:27 PM

scratch and dent sale

**WSSix** · #9 02-12-2014, 09:31 PM

I believe that ZR1 roadster was a one off.

I'm honestly surprised this wasn't caught sooner from soil samples during construction. Maybe they didn't have to do anything like that since it wasn't a tall vertical structure.

RECOVERY ROOM · #10 02-13-2014, 10:10 PM

The earth must hate Corvette's