An iconic landmark in Arizona has collapsed just hours after a haunting video was filmed at the site. On Aug. 8, Lake Powell’s famous Double Arch suffered a total collapse into the , according to .
The stunning geographical feature, referred to as the “Toilet Bowl,” “Hole in the Roof” or “Crescent Pool” by vacationers and locals, reportedly nearly crushed swimmers hours before it crumbled into the water. According to , a group of boaters and swimmers were gathered near Double Arch when rocks began to fall. Merril Campbell, a Utah , was present when the archway began to give way.
Hearing a massive splash too big to be a person, Campbell soon discovered he was almost a witness to a tragedy. “I looked over, and a couple of the guys I was with had seen a big piece of rock fall off the bottom of the arch into the lake,” Campbell told KSL-TV. Campbell’s friends saw the rockfall and estimated one chunk of tumbling stone to be the size of a Volkswagen.
In a haunting video taken during the initial partial collapse (the rockfall itself was not in-frame, although a massive splash was), chaos eruptted after people realized what is happening. Those on the water begin shouting at those near the feature to get away. “We were just under there,” a swimmer can be heard saying in the video.
Double Arch, although beautiful, seems to have been on a slow countdown to failure. “Since formation,” the National Parks Service wrote in , “this fine-grained sand feature has .