MANIPAY SUBSIDENCE

Herbert Daniel Gebauer - 06/01/2018

COOMARASWAMY (1906 in COORAY 1967: 71) narrates an eyewitness's account (note 1) of a subsidence on 20th April 1905 resulting in a closed depression (swallow hole, sinkhole) at the village of Manipay or Manippai and Manippay (note 2): At dawn … the villagers living near the Kerai fields heard a strange sound which was found to have been caused by the collapse of the surface soil over an area of about 10 feet [3 m] in diameter. The pit thus formed contained a pool of saltwater which gradually widened till about 4 p.m. when the pool was about 40 feet [12 m] in diameter; soil from the sides continued to fall in for a time. The depth of the water was about 30 feet [9.15 m], and its surface about one foot [0.30 m] below the surface of the field. Salt water, passing through underground passages, gradually undermined a place where the subsoil was more than usually friable. Similar occurrences are said to have taken place in the past in Jaffna. CEYLON TRAVELLER (1974: 248; 1983: 250) explais that the Jaffna Peninsula is one vast shelf of limestone and has a structure like a sponge where, strangely enough, although it [the Jaffna Peninsula] abounds in curiosities such as the Tidal Well near Pottur and the Sink Hole [note 3] at Manipay, few caverns are actually known. A new one, complete with an underground lakelet, was revealed a few years ago by a subsidence at Keerimalai [note 4], near the Cement Factory.s that the Jaffna Peninsula is one vast shelf of limestone and has a structure like a sponge where, strangely enough, although it [the Jaffna Peninsula] abounds in curiosities such as the Tidal Well near Pottur and the Sink Hole [note 3] at Manipay, few caverns are actually known. A new one, complete with an underground lakelet, was revealed a few years ago by a subsidence at Keerimalai [note 4], near the Cement Factory.