A central Florida man was still missing and feared dead early today after a sinkhole opened under his home Thursday night, swallowing him in his bed.As hours passed overnight and rescuers and family lost hope of seeing 36-year-old Jeff Bush pulled from the ground alive, the sinkhole continued to grow, officials said.
“The hole has gotten deeper,” geotechnical engineer Larry Madrid said at a news conference Friday evening. “We can’t get into the building because of the potential for sudden collapse.”The continued instability of the ground slowed engineers and kept evacuees in the Tampa-area neighborhood from returning to their homes.
“We’re really handicapped and paralyzed, and we really can’t do a whole lot more than wait,” Madrid said.
“I know in my heart he's dead,” Bush’s brother Jeremy told reporters Friday.
Authorities condemned the concrete-block home, determining the ground was unstable. Surrounding homes were evacuated, but the hole is isolated to the house, authorities 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.
Late Thursday night, Jeremy Bush heard something that sounded like a car crash, then heard a scream. He ran to his brother’s room, but all he could see was a mattress. He tried to save him and ended up getting stuck himself.
When Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputy Douglas Duvall arrived at the home, he yanked Jeremy Bush from the hole and the two were able to escape.
At the news conference Friday evening, Duvall said he couldn’t sleep Thursday night, thinking about the what he’d seen and about Bush's family.
Central Florida is more susceptible to sinkholes than the rest of the state because of its geology.
Subdivisions, shopping malls, schools and roads are built on Florida's spongelike crust of limestone, which is full of cavities and cracks that sometimes collapse.
"This is a hidden danger," Manoj Chopra, a University of Central Florida civil-engineering professor, said Friday as word of the killer sinkhole spread across the globe.
Sinkholes form when water dissolves limestone, causing sands to migrate through and form a hole on the surface -- like the neck of an hourglass.
"It's like someone pulling the plug on a drain and swoosh, everything circles down the hole," said Mike Perkins, curator of the Orange County History Center's sinkhole exhibit. "This is almost like an earthquake; it just happens."
The region has a history of activity, including a 320-foot-wide, 90-foot-deep sinkhole that swallowed a Winter Park car dealership and home in 1981. It is now a pond near Fairbanks Avenue.
Three years ago, sinkholes collapsed lanes of U.S. Highway 27 in east Polk County. And several years before that, a sinkhole that opened up on Scott Lake swallowed enough water to make the shoreline recede dramatically in a Lakeland-area exclusive neighborhood.
From the Los Angeles Times and Orlando Sentinel
“The hole has gotten deeper,” geotechnical engineer Larry Madrid said at a news conference Friday evening. “We can’t get into the building because of the potential for sudden collapse.”The continued instability of the ground slowed engineers and kept evacuees in the Tampa-area neighborhood from returning to their homes.
“We’re really handicapped and paralyzed, and we really can’t do a whole lot more than wait,” Madrid said.
“I know in my heart he's dead,” Bush’s brother Jeremy told reporters Friday.
Authorities condemned the concrete-block home, determining the ground was unstable. Surrounding homes were evacuated, but the hole is isolated to the house, authorities 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.
Late Thursday night, Jeremy Bush heard something that sounded like a car crash, then heard a scream. He ran to his brother’s room, but all he could see was a mattress. He tried to save him and ended up getting stuck himself.
When Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputy Douglas Duvall arrived at the home, he yanked Jeremy Bush from the hole and the two were able to escape.
At the news conference Friday evening, Duvall said he couldn’t sleep Thursday night, thinking about the what he’d seen and about Bush's family.
Central Florida is more susceptible to sinkholes than the rest of the state because of its geology.
Subdivisions, shopping malls, schools and roads are built on Florida's spongelike crust of limestone, which is full of cavities and cracks that sometimes collapse.
"This is a hidden danger," Manoj Chopra, a University of Central Florida civil-engineering professor, said Friday as word of the killer sinkhole spread across the globe.
Sinkholes form when water dissolves limestone, causing sands to migrate through and form a hole on the surface -- like the neck of an hourglass.
"It's like someone pulling the plug on a drain and swoosh, everything circles down the hole," said Mike Perkins, curator of the Orange County History Center's sinkhole exhibit. "This is almost like an earthquake; it just happens."
The region has a history of activity, including a 320-foot-wide, 90-foot-deep sinkhole that swallowed a Winter Park car dealership and home in 1981. It is now a pond near Fairbanks Avenue.
Three years ago, sinkholes collapsed lanes of U.S. Highway 27 in east Polk County. And several years before that, a sinkhole that opened up on Scott Lake swallowed enough water to make the shoreline recede dramatically in a Lakeland-area exclusive neighborhood.
From the Los Angeles Times and Orlando Sentinel