WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) — The cavern underneath a neighborhood west of Round Rock could be even bigger than engineers first thought.
While Williamson County officials were drilling for core samples around the cave that opened up in the Brushy Creek neighborhood Feb. 8, they discovered an air pocket about 20 feet away from the entrance, toward Ephraim Road. On Tuesday, they lowered a flashlight and camera down through the bore hole and estimate the chamber is about 20 feet below street level and about 9 feet from there to the bottom. They don’t yet know how wide or long it is, or if it connects to the original cavern, which was previously measured to be about 200 feet long and 20 feet deep.
“Due to the location of the chamber, the possible connection to the cave was not visible during the exploration of the cave as it was hidden by the material that fell into the cave when the cave roof collapsed,” according to a release from Williamson County, which added that when workers go in to start remediation to protect the cave and the street, they will be able to clear out the rock and see if the new chamber connects.
The core sampling done over the past week will be analyzed to determine how strong the rock around the cave is, which will help engineers determine a path forward with what to do about it. Williamson County expects to get results back from the core sampling either late this week or early next week.