The Tehran Sinkhole

Waking one fine spring morning, someone in the house noticed something odd out in the garden. A sinkhole of considerable proportions had appeared there right where the gardener, Mohammed, had been standing the day before trimming at a tree he had planted.

A repair crew was summoned to investigate and fix the problem. They arrived, erected a hoist and began their work, soon discovering that the root cause was thousands of years in the making: a qanat under the house had eroded away until it caved in, creating a sinkhole.

The qanat was ancient, created about 3,000 years before we lived in Tehran for conveying fresh water from snowmelt on the slopes of the Alborz Mountains to the city far downslope.

Construction of the qanat was no simple feat, requiring ingenuity and massive human labor.

Repairs progressed through to the following spring season to fill the hole and rebuild over it.

I often marveled there was enough confidence in the repairs to support a swimming pool.

And I often wondered how long that repair and pool installation held up after we left Tehran.