How Plausible Is Grey's Anatomy's Seattle Sinkhole? Expert Weighs In
With a massive sinkhole swallowing up the streets of Seattle, the season premiere of Grey’s Anatomy is sure to be full of excitement -- even though the whole premise of the disaster is pretty much impossible. We asked some local experts at the University of Washington’s Department of Earth and Space Sciences how plausible the premiere scenario is. The answer? Not very.
“Downtown Seattle has its share of geologic hazards -- the city is threatened by large earthquakes and landslides are not uncommon in some Seattle neighborhoods -- but large sinkholes are not on the list,” Professor Juliet Crider tells Wetpaint Entertainment exclusively. “Seattle is underlain by great piles of sand, gravel, and mud left by retreating glaciers, and these types of sediment don't create sinkholes. Sinkholes develop where rock is dissolved underground, and only a few kinds of rock do this: limestone and rocksalt. There are a number of towns near Seattle where this might be an issue, but not downtown Seattle. So, unless some mysterious organization has constructed a secret network of tunnels and caverns beneath Seattle, the concept of a sinkhole swallowing downtown is pure fiction.”
But! Professor Crider’s colleague, Affiliate Professor Charlotte Schreiber, says that Grey’s producers could possibly get away with their plan if they set the catastrophe on the flats down by the Puget Sound. “The only parts of Seattle that are sort of fluid is along the waterfront where the city is built on muds brought in by artificial flow (hydraulic pump sluicing) about a century ago, or wherever small rivers come into the Sound,” she says. “When there is a quake some of that mud and sand can ‘boil up’ and fluidize. This area does not have huge soft deposits, but other parts of the world do (Bangladesh, for example).”
No sweat. If there’s one thing Grey’s Anatomy fans can do, it’s to suspend their disbelief.
Catch the sorta implausible sinkhole (and the rest of the cast) on the season premiere for Grey’s on Thursday, September 22 at 9/8c.
