SEFFNER, Fla. —
The effort to find the body of a Florida man who was swallowed by sinkhole under his Florida home was called off Saturday while crews tried to learn how far the underground cavity reaches and whether more homes are at risk.
Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill said rescuers were ending the effort to find Jeff Bush’s body and they planned to bring in heavy equipment on Sunday to begin demolishing the four-bedroom home.
“At this point it’s really not possible to recover the body,” Merrill said, later adding “we’re dealing with a very unusual sinkhole.”
Bush, 37, was in his bedroom Thursday night in Seffner — a suburb of 8,000 people 15 miles east of downtown Tampa — when the earth opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five others in the house escape unharmed.
On Saturday, the normally quiet neighborhood of concrete block homes painted in Florida pastels was jammed with cars as engineers, reporters, and curious onlookers came to the scene.
At the home next door to the Bushes, a family cried and organized boxes. Testing determined that their house also was compromised by the sinkhole, according to Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokesman Ronnie Rivera. The family, which had evacuated Friday, was allowed to go inside for about a half-hour to gathering belongings.
Sisters Soliris and Elbairis Gonzalez, who live on the same street as Bushes, said rumors were circulating among neighbors, with people concerned for their safety.
“I’ve had nightmares,” Soliris Gonzalez, 31, said. “In my dreams, I keep checking for cracks in the house.”
They said the family has discussed where to go if forced to evacuate, and they’ve taken their important documents to a storage unit.
“The rest of it, this is material stuff, as long as our family is fine,” Soliris Gonzalez said.
“You never know underneath the ground what’s happening,” added Elbairis Gonzalez, 30.
Experts say thousands of sinkholes erupt yearly in Florida because of the state’s unique geography, though most are small and deaths rarely occur.
“There’s hardly a place in Florida that’s immune to sinkholes,” said Sandy Nettles, who owns a geology consulting company in the Tampa area. “There’s no way of ever predicting where a sinkhole is going to occur.”
Most sinkholes are small, like one found Saturday morning in Largo, 35 miles away from Seffner. The Largo sinkhole, at about 10 feet long and several feet wide, is in a mall parking lot. Such discoveries are common throughout the year in Florida.
The state is prone because it sits on limestone, a porous rock that easily dissolves in water, with a layer of clay on top. The clay is thicker in some locations — including the area where Bush became a victim — making them even more prone to sinkholes.
Jonathan Arthur, the state geologist and director of the Florida Geological Survey, said other states sit atop limestone in a similar way, but Florida has additional factors — extreme weather, development, aquifer pumping and construction — that can cause sinkholes. “The conditions under which a sinkhole will form can be very rapid, or they can form slowly over time,” he said.
But it remained unclear Saturday what, if anything, caused the Seffner sinkhole.
“The condition that caused that sinkhole could have started a million years ago,” Nettles said.
Engineers had been testing in the area of the Bush house since 7 a.m. Saturday. By 10 a.m., officials moved media crews farther away so experts could test a home across the street.
Experts spent the previous day on the property, taking soil samples and running tests — while acknowledging that the entire lot where Bush lay entombed was dangerous. On Saturday, officials were still not allowing anyone in the Bush home.
Jeremy Bush, who tried to rescue his brother, lay flowers and a stuffed lamb near the house Saturday morning and wept.
He said someone came to his home a couple of months ago to check for sinkholes and other issues, apparently for insurance purposes, but found nothing wrong. State law requires home insurers to provide coverage against sinkholes.
“And a couple of months later, my brother dies. In a sinkhole,” Bush said Friday.
The sinkhole, estimated at 20 feet across and 20 feet deep, caused the home’s concrete floor to cave in around 11 p.m. Thursday as everyone in the Tampa-area house was turning in for the night. It gave way with a loud crash that sounded like a car hitting the house.
National, International News
Related Photos
-
Jeremy Bush places flowers and a stuffed animal at a makeshift memorial in front of a home where a sinkhole opened up underneath a bedroom late Thursday evening and swallowed his brother Jeffrey in Seffner, Fla. on Saturday, March 2, 2013. Jeffrey Bush, 37, was in his bedroom Thursday night when the earth opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five other people were in the house but managed to escape unharmed. Bush's brother jumped into the hole to try to help, but he had to be rescued himself by a sheriff's deputy. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara) The Associated Press
Discussion
Rescuers end effort to find body in Fla. sinkhole
- National, International News
-
-
G8 exposes rift among leaders on Syria
Deep differences over Syria’s fierce civil war clouded a summit of world leaders Monday, with Russian President Vladimir Putin defiantly rejecting calls from the U.S., Britain and France to halt his political and military support for Syrian leader Bashar Assad’s regime.
-
Unions give lift to Turkish protest movement
Turkish labor groups fanned a wave of defiance against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authority, leading rallies and a one-day strike to support activists whose two-week standoff with the government has shaken the country’s secular democracy.
-
For young immigrants, a delayed coming of age
As a child, Jorge Tume used to sit and do homework as his parents cleaned the desks and floors of a concrete company in Miami. When he was done, he’d take out the trash and help finish cleaning.
-
Investigators ‘zeroing in’ on Colo. wildfire start
Sheriff’s officials say they have now recorded more than 500 homes leveled by the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history.
-
Still no Hoffa after 1st day of latest search
Federal agents revived the hunt for the remains of Jimmy Hoffa on Monday, digging around in a suburban Detroit field where a reputed Mafia captain says the Teamsters boss’ body was buried.
-
Today in History for Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Today is Tuesday, June 18, the 169th day of 2013. There are 196 days left in the year.
-
Series of attacks kill 51 people across Iraq
A blistering string of apparently coordinated bombings and a shooting across Iraq killed at least 51 and wounded dozens Sunday, spreading fear throughout the county in a wave of violence that is raising the prospect of a return to widespread sectarian killing a decade after a U.S.-led invasion.
-
Turkey unrest goes on despite end to park protest
Riot police cordoned off streets, set up roadblocks and fired tear gas and water cannon to prevent anti-government protesters from converging on Istanbul’s central Taksim Square on Sunday, unbowed even as Turkey’s prime minister addressed hundreds of thousands of supporters a few kilometers away.
-
Iraq no-fly zone viewed as symbol for one in Syria
The Obama administration, trying to avoid getting drawn deeper into Syria’s civil war, has pointed to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a symbol of what can go wrong when America’s military wades into Middle East conflicts.
-
Steady rain falls as crews work against Colo. fire
With evacuees anxious to return, firefighters worked Sunday to dig up and extinguish hot spots to protect homes spared by the most destructive wildfire in Colorado’s history.
- More National, International News Headlines
-
