What's Missing?

On Thursday May 19, 2005 Rueters reported:

MOSCOW - A Russian village was left baffled on Thursday after its lake disappeared overnight.

NTV television showed pictures of a giant muddy hole bathed in summer sun, while fishermen from the village of Bolotnikovo looked on disconsolately.

“It is very dangerous. If a person had been in this disaster, he would have had almost no chance of survival. The trees flew downwards, under the ground,” said Dmitry Zaitsev, a local Emergencies Ministry official interviewed by the channel.

Officials in Nizhegorodskaya region, on the Volga river east of Moscow, said water in the lake might have been sucked down into an underground water-course or cave system, but some villagers had more sinister explanations.

“I am thinking, well, America has finally got to us,” said one old woman, as she sat on the ground outside her house.

I laughed at the reaction of the old woman, but I was mostly interested in exactly what kind of geological phenomena might be involved in this sort of occurrence. I bookmarked the article figuring it'd get linked to the follow-up reports. Now, while doing a little ‘browser-cleaning’ after almost a month, I’ve come across the old article.

Unfortunately the follow-up is nowhere to be found. I’ll admit I haven’t exactly pulled out all the stops yet, but how hard should it be? I’ve googled for ‘missing lake’, ‘Bolotnikovo’, and ‘Secret American Lake Evaporating Laser Satellites’ but I’ve only found numerous links to the original article.

I think it’s interesting that every news source (MSNBC for instance) simply cut and pasted the original Reuters report and then . . . nothing. The closest thing to original writing came from this BBC report, which does little more than paraphrase the Reuters and TV reports. Isn’t there supposed to be competition among news affiliates? Shouldn't someone at least check back through a Russian news station for details? How lazy can they be?

I understand this isn’t prime local news, but it seems like someone must be covering it. Even if it’s not vital to us over here, I imagine there are a few Russian villagers who want answers. What have they been reading/watching in Bolotnikovo? Must be the Michael Jackson trial - just like everywhere else.