http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/story/21474423/2013/03/04/second-sinkhole-opens-in-seffner
http://www.businessinsider.com/sinkhole-swallowed-florida-man-2013-3
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-sinkhole-florida-20130301,0,1600381.story
- See more at: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-sinkhole-florida-20130301,0,1600381.story#sthash.o4MauHQn.dpuf
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A Florida man is "presumed dead" after a massive sinkhole opened under his bedroom near Tampa, Fla., Nick Valencia and Tina Burnside of CNN report.
http://www.businessinsider.com/sinkhole-swallowed-florida-man-2013-3
Here's The Sinkhole That Swallowed A Florida Man's Bedroom Last Week
Late Thursday night a 36-year-old Florida man died after his bedroom collapsed into a sinkhole.
On Sunday workers began demolishing the house and clearing debris so engineers can figure out how to fill the crater, which is 20 feet wide and more than 50 feet deep.
On Saturday officials told reporters that "it's really not possible" to recover Jeff Bush's body from the void.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-sinkhole-florida-20130301,0,1600381.story
Sinkhole swallows Florida man; 'I know in my heart he's dead,' brother says
SEFFNER, Fla.—
A Florida man was missing and feared dead on Friday after a large sinkhole suddenly swallowed the bedroom of his suburban Tampa home, police and fire officials said.
Jeff Bush, 36, was in his room sleeping and the other five members of the household were getting ready for bed on Thursday night when they heard a loud crash and Jeff screaming. Jeff's brother, 35-year-old Jeremy Bush, jumped into the hole and furiously kept digging to find his brother. "I feel in my heart he didn't make it," Jeremy told Tampa TV station WFTS. "There were six of us in the house; five got out."
Jeremy told television reporters on the scene, "I know in my heart he's dead."
Jeremy himself had to be rescued from the sinkhole by the first responder to the emergency call, Douglas Duvall of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. When Duvall entered Jeff Bush's bedroom, all he saw was a widening chasm but no sign of Jeff.
"The hole took the entire bedroom," said Duvall. "You could see the bedframe, the dresser, everything was sinking," he said. Norman Wicker, 48, the father of Jeremy's fiancée who also lived in the house, ran to get a flashlight and shovel. "It sounded like a car ran into the back of the house," Wicker said. Hillsborough Fire Rescue officials lowered a camera and listening device into the 20-foot-deep hole to try to find Jeffrey Bush. But the ground kept moving and they lost the equipment.
"He's down there, but we can't hear here anything and we can't see anything," said Ronnie Rivera, a Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokesman. "We just can't do anything."
Structural engineers brought in equipment to determine if rescuers can enter the house. But with each hour that passed, the hope for rescue faded and despair set in.
"There is a very large, very fluid mass underneath this house rendering the entire house and the entire lot dangerous and unsafe," Bill Bracken, the head of an engineering company assisting fire and rescue officials, told the news conference late on Friday."We are still trying to determine the extent and nature of what's down there so we can best determine how to approach it and how to extricate," Bracken said.
Several nearby homes were evacuated in case the 30-foot wide sinkhole got larger but officials said it only appeared to be getting deeper. The Bush brothers worked together as landscapers, according to Leland Wicker, 48, one of the other residents of the house. The risk of sinkholes is common in Florida due to the state's porous geological bedrock, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. As rainwater filters down into the ground, it dissolves the rock causing erosion that can lead to underground caverns, which cause sinkholes when they collapse. Florida suffered one of its worst sinkhole accidents in 1994 when a 15-story-deep chasm opened up east of Tampa at a phosphate mine. It created a hole 185 feet deep and as much as 160 feet wide. Locals dubbed it Disney World's newest attraction - 'Journey to the Center of the Earth.' In 1981 in Winter Park near Orlando, a sinkhole was measured as 320 feet wide and 90 feet deep, swallowing a two-story house, part of a Porsche dealership, and an Olympic-size swimming pool. The site is now an artificial lake in the city. "Mortgage companies are more and more requiring Florida home buyers to have sinkhole coverage on their homeowners insurance policy," said K.C. Williams, a Tampa sinkhole and property damage claims lawyer who lives 2 miles away from the damaged home. |
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http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/03/01/173225027/sinkhole-swallows-sleeping-man-in-florida
Sinkhole Swallows Sleeping Man In Florida
There's a terrifying story from Florida this morning.
"A sheriff's deputy plucked a man from an expanding sinkhole Thursday night, but neither was able to save the man's brother from being sucked into the rubble, authorities said," theTampa Bay Times writes.
Tampa's ABC Action News reports that "Hillsborough County Fire Rescue officials say the victim, Jeff Bush, is presumed dead." The Times' online headline early Friday said rescue hopes were "dim."
CBS News adds that "Fire rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico said Bracken Engineering officials determined the home's bedroom is the center of the sinkhole, which measures about 100 feet across. Listening devices and cameras were placed in the hole but there had been no contact with the missing man by early Friday."
As the Times writes, "although it has proven somewhat common for sinkholes to open in Central Florida and swallow cars and houses, it is not at all common for people to become trapped in them."
Why does this happen? The Florida Department of Environmental Protection says that:
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Ultimate Nightmare: Man Missing After Sinkhole Opens Up Under His Bedroom
The house in Brandon, a suburb of Tampa, where the sinkhole swallowed a man's bedroom.
A Florida man is "presumed dead" after a massive sinkhole opened under his bedroom near Tampa, Fla., Nick Valencia and Tina Burnside of CNN report.
The 36-year-old man was heard screaming for help as the collapse occurred around 11 p.m. on Thursday night.
"When [his brother] got there, there was no bedroom left," Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico told The Associated Press. "There was no furniture. All he saw was a piece of the mattress sticking up."
An arriving police officer pulled the brother from the still-collapsing house. There's been no contact with the man since then and adjacent neighbors have been evacuated.
"We put engineering equipment into the sinkhole and didn't see anything compatible with life," Damico said.
Rescuers cannot continue until engineers determine the borders of the naturally-occurring hole, which is estimated to be about 30 feet across above the surface and as many as 100 feet wide and 50 feet deep underneath.
"The entire house is on the sinkhole," Damico said. Five adults and one 2-year-old child were inside the home when chasm opened up.
CNN notes that the ground covering the massive cavity could buckle, taking the entire house as well as neighboring homes down with it.
We'll have more info as it becomes available.
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