Anatomy of a sinkhole

Chris Barton

ON THE AFTERNOON OF MONDAY 25 September, Auckland water and wastewater services provider Watercare was alerted to a gaping, 20-metre-wide, 13-metre-deep sinkhole in a carpark on St Georges Bay Road, Parnell. It was caused by the collapse of a section of an aged 2.1-metre-diameter brick pipe of the Ōrākei main sewer–;part of a network dating back to the 1920s, collecting both wastewater and stormwater for a large part of central and west Auckland. The next day, after Watercare crews had used an excavator to widen the top of the sinkhole and concrete-sprayed the slope to stabilise the land, the site was now a massive, inverted cone-shaped crater. Discovering that the pipe was blocked, Watercare began clearing the blockage using a vacuum sucker truck and hydro-jetting water into the pipe to remove…

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Architecture NZ (Digital) - 1 Issue, November-December 2023

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