Buriticupu, a town of roughly 55,000 people located in the Brazilian Amazon, risks being swallowed by giant ravines that have been growing “exponentially” over the last few months.

Authorities in Buriticupu have already evacuated 1,200 people from the highest-risk areas of the town, but with no solution in sight, the giant ravines threaten to eventually swallow the entire settlement. Buriticupu’s sinkhole problem dates back roughly three decades and is reportedly the cause of a combination of factors, such as erosion-prone sandy soil, poor urban planning, and deforestation, but it has been exacerbated by recent heavy rains which caused the sinkholes to expand at a rapid pace. A couple of years ago, experts identified 26 giant holes advancing toward the town, some of which have since merged to create ravines up to 20 meters deep.

“In the space of the last few months, the dimensions have expanded exponentially, approaching substantially closer to the residences,” an emergency decree issued by the city government earlier this month states.

“It’s very scary. Sometimes I pray to God that it doesn’t rain so hard, there are times when I even ask Him for forgiveness,” Nazaré Feitosa, a safety technician who lives near the craters, told Globo.

“When it rains, it’s so scary that no one sleeps here, we stay awake all night listening to the ground collapse,” another Buriticupu resident said. “Sometimes I get up to look and check if it’s happening close to our house. If it is, we have to evacuate.”

In the last ten years, a single sinkhole has swallowed up three streets and more than 50 houses in Buriticupu. Some streets have partially disappeared and those houses in the immediate proximity of the sinkholes that have not collapsed, have been evacuated.

The Buriticupu local authorities have declared a state of public calamity, but the problem is now beyond the town’s control, and all it can do is ensure that those evacuated have a roof over their heads and can rebuild in a safer area of the city. But those affected are worried that, unless the problem is somehow contained, there won’t be any safe part of the town to move to in the near future.

“It’s a good town, a beautiful town, but in the way things stand, in a few years it will even be at risk of extinction,” Carlos Martins, a businessman and resident of Buriticupu, said.