Moe14
  
 |  | Re: Odessa catacombs, Ukraine
<Reply # 102 on 3/4/2010 9:39 PM >
|  | | | Posted by Freak
I'm curious about the history of these, maybe it's been covered beofore and I missed it. I'm also curious about the origin of the layout on your maps. In Paris the present-day catacombs are a tiny fraction of what was originally there, originally they were large room-and pillar mines with lots of open space. After collapses started happening, the large areas were mostly walled off and backfilled with inspection tunnels (galleries) running around the perimeter to allow inspection of the backfill and supporting walls. Thus the present Paris catacomb network is mostly just inspection tunnels built within mostly backfilled space.
Is the situation simillar in Odessa? Are the tunnels shown on the maps inspection galleries, or are they the original mine tunnels? It looks like you have various ages of mine/tunnel as well, the machine-cut blocks in your last set of photos definitely appear to be newer.
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Hey Freak - Eugene can correct me if I'm wrong about any of the following, which I might be.
Odessa catas are both way rawer and way newer than Paris or Naples. They're essentially one small step removed from decomissioned mines. From what I remember, the oldest are in the 100-200 year-old range, while the newest are still being dug, or at most 20-30 years old.
The newer tunnels seemed much larger, straighter, and more solid and probably have engineers and inspections and such, while the older tunnels kind of resemble the Val de Grace area of the Paris catacombs - maybe not "unstable," but not professionally gone through and stabilized in a coordinated way, and a complete spaghetti bowl.
The sheer amount of tunnels the amazing thing about Odessa, as well as the some of WWII history - there's bunkers and a few old partisan bases. I think if you wanted to you could walk something like 20 kilometers from the outskirts of the city to the central part of town. Most of the huge networks are located in the small towns on the outskirts of the city. There's at least one really old network under the city itself that's amazing, becuase it connects through all the old WWI bunkers under the city (well, at least two old bunkers that we went to).
I'm fairly sure the maps are all the result of explorers. From what I could gather they enjoy a relationship with the official authorities somewhere between that of the Cataphiles and the Sottosuolo guys.
Anyway, hope you guys are doing well - maybe we'll find outselves in a tunnel together again someday.
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