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Comment by underseacables | Hacker News Reader

The geology of Florida is terrifying. I’ve been reading about how a building like this could collapse, and I came across this interesting phrase, “sink hole alley” The area between Tampa and Orlando. The bed rock is so unstable that sinkholes have become ubiquitous.

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Confirmed, as someone living in “sink hole alley”. Also look up the sink hole of Epcot and what Disney engineers did to solve that. No one thinks of it when they visit Epcot but it’s there, under their nose, the whole time. [1]

[1]: https://insidethemagic.net/2021/06/disney-world-massive-sink...

Here as well. Fortunately, there's been less subsidence since the rains started falling again, about a decade or so back.

even better is the strawbrrry growers are still allowed to pump down the aquifer if it freezes encouraging salt watdr intrusion and dissolution. florida is really a bad place for republican deregulation.

It’s almost the opposite in NYC. Huge buildings on solid foundations. Hard part is building. Everything you drop you need to build same day. Good luck organizing it!

The new midtown superthins are held up by reinforced concrete and are swaying in the breeze. They're going to be a liability once enough cracks develop.

All high rises sway in the breeze

Most of them are structural steel and not twig thin.

I saw a really thin building in the opening credits of a movie.

I found it was 432 Park Avenue.

Wow, even thinner than a thin cigarette...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue

That is a very entertaining read, especially the financing.

I would not want to live in a building like that. I am quite satisfied with our one-story 1500 square foot house.

I remember being on the top of the Eiffel Tower, and you could feel the slow swaying. It was like being on a ship. You couldn't see the swaying, you just felt constantly off balance.

I don't think the bedrock is the problem, it's the layer of limestone above it - that's what everything in the state actually sits on.

I'm not an expert at this, but I did grow up in Florida. I'm pretty certain the bedrock is limestone. It's a Karst landscape.

Indeed, the entire atlantic seacoast from the Carolinas on down to Florida is Karst carbonate.

https://karstwaters.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/US_KARST_...

Below the limestone karst, there's a solid bedrock structure that extends out into gulf - the Florida Platform.

The Florida Platform is composed of carbonate rocks up to a depth of like 6km.

I remember a car sinking (sink hole) at a gas station near my home in Florida... but in this case, sink holes were not the problem... and the owner knew about structural and draining problems (they just did nothing about it)

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