Florida man swallowed by sinkhole under bedroom

Earths fury

 In a matter of seconds, the earth opened under Jeff Bush’s Florida bedroom and swallowed him up like something out of a horror movie. About the only thing left was the TV cable running down into the hole.

Bush, 37, was presumed dead on Friday, the victim of a sinkhole a hazard so common in Florida that state law requires home insurers to provide coverage against the danger. The sinkhole, estimated at 20 feet (6 meters) across and 20 feet deep, caused the home’s concrete floor to cave in on 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 and brought Bush's brother running.

Jeremy said he jumped into the hole but couldn’t see his brother and had to be rescued himself by a sheriff’s deputy who reached out and pulled him to safety.  “The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn't care. I wanted to save my brother,” he said through tears on Friday in a neighbour’s yard. “But I just couldn't do nothing.” He added, “I could swear I heard him hollering my name to help him.” Officials lowered equipment into the sinkhole and saw no signs of life, said Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico. A dresser and the TV set had vanished down the hole, along with most of Bush’s bed.

“All I could see was the cable wire running from the TV going down into the hole. I saw a corner of the bed and a corner of the box spring and the frame of the bed,” Jeremy Bush said.

At a news conference Friday night, county administrator Mike Merrill described the home as “seriously unstable.” He said no one can go in the home because officials were afraid of another collapse and losing more lives. The soil around the home was very soft and the sinkhole was expected to grow. Engineers said they may have to demolish the small, sky-blue house, even though from the outside there appeared to be nothing wrong with the four-bedroom, concrete-wall structure.

Florida is highly prone to sinkholes because there are caverns below ground of limestone, a porous rock that easily dissolves in water. A sinkhole near Orlando grew to 122 metres across in 1981 and devoured five sports cars, a three-bedroom house and the deep end of an Olympic-size swimming pool.