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Sinkhole swallows man in Florida

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sublimit

sublimit

Banned
I've just read the story in yahoo news,so tragic and i feel very sorry for the man who tried to save his brother. :(

SEFFNER, Fla. (AP) — Engineers worked gingerly Saturday morning to find out more about a slowly growing sinkhole that swallowed a Florida man in his bedroom, believing the entire house could eventually succumb to the unstable ground.
Jeff 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.

Engineers began doing more tests at 7 a.m. Saturday. Crews with equipment were at the home next door, one of two that has been evacuated. By 10 a.m., officials moved media crews farther away from the Bush house so experts could perform tests on the home across the street. It's unclear how large the sinkhole is, or whether it leads to other caverns and chasms throughout the neighborhood. Experts say the underground of West Central Florida looks similar to Swiss cheese, with the geography lending itself to sinkholes.

Experts spent the previous day on the property, taking soil samples and running various tests — while acknowledging that the entire lot where Bush lay entombed was dangerous. No one was allowed in the home.
"I cannot tell you why it has not collapsed yet," Bill Bracken, the owner of an engineering company called to assess the sinkhole, said of the home. He described the earth below as a "very large, very fluid mass."
"This is not your typical sinkhole," said Hillsborough County administrator Mike Merrill. "This is a chasm. For that reason, we're being very deliberate."

Officials delicately addressed another sad reality: Bush was likely dead and the family wanted his body. Merrill, though, said they didn't want to jeopardize any more lives.
"They would like us to go in quickly and locate Mr. Bush," Merrill said. Officials added Saturday morning that a fund had been set up to help the families affected by the sinkhole.
On Saturday, Jeremy Bush — who tried to rescue his brother when the earth opened — lay flowers and a stuffed lamb near the house and wept.

Hillsborough County Fire Chief Ron Roger called the situation "very complex."
"It's continuing to evolve, and the ground is continuing to collapse," he said.
Sinkholes are so common in Florida that state law requires home insurers to provide coverage against the danger. While some cars, homes and other buildings have been devoured, it's extremely rare for them to swallow a person.

Florida is highly prone to sinkholes because there are caverns below ground of limestone, a porous rock that easily dissolves in water.
"You can almost envision a piece of Swiss cheese," Taylor Yarkosky, a sinkhole expert from Brooksville, Fla., said while gesturing to the ground and the sky blue home where the earth opened in Seffner. "Any house in Florida could be in that same situation."
A sinkhole near Orlando grew to 400 feet across in 1981 and devoured five sports cars, most of two businesses, a three-bedroom house and the deep end of an Olympic-size swimming pool.

More than 500 sinkholes have been reported in Hillsborough County alone since the government started keeping track in 1954, according to the state's environmental agency.
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 and brought Bush's brother running.
Jeremy Bush 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 as the ground crumbled around him.

"The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn't care. I wanted to save my brother," Jeremy Bush said through tears Friday in a neighbor's yard. "But I just couldn't do nothing."
He added: "I could swear I heard him hollering my name to help him."
A dresser and the TV set had vanished down the hole, along with most of Bush's bed.
A sheriff's deputy who was the first to respond to a frantic 911 call said when he arrived, he saw Jeremy Bush.
Deputy Douglas Duvall said he reached down as if he was "sticking his hand into the floor" to help Jeremy Bush. Duvall said he didn't see anyone else in the hole.
As he pulled Bush out, "everything was sinking," Duvall said.
Engineers said they may have to demolish the small house, even though from the outside there appeared to be nothing wrong with the four-bedroom, concrete-wall structure, built in 1974.
Jeremy Bush said someone came out to the home a couple of months ago to check for sinkholes and other things, apparently for insurance purposes.
"He said there was nothing wrong with the house. Nothing. And a couple of months later, my brother dies. In a sinkhole," Bush said.
Click to expand...
 
A

akira28

Member
guy said he woke up and heard screams coming from his brother's house...from a hole where his bro's bedroom used to be. That's fucked up.
 
K

KidGalactus

Member
LuchaShaq said:
There are 7 billion people.


We can afford to lose a few not to mention he wasn't some great mind that was going to cause world peace.


Making nice posts instead of jokes won't bring him back.
Click to expand...

Making people in here feel shitty won't bring him back either.

Feel free to go eff yourself.
 
V

Vilam

Maxis Redwood
Ugh, sinkholes are the stuff of nightmares. Sounds absolutely terrifying... I feel terrible for that guy and their family. How could you ever sleep peacefully again?
 
S

starchild excalibur

Member
LuchaShaq said:
There are 7 billion people.


We can afford to lose a few not to mention he wasn't some great mind that was going to cause world peace.


Making nice posts instead of jokes won't bring him back.
Click to expand...

Cool. I'll be sure to remember this if you ever post on GAF about losing a loved one in any manner that I can twist to make seem humorous...that is, unless they happen to have been a great mind on the verge of causing world peace.
 
E

EatinOlives

Member
Draft said:
Florida man never disappoints.

CNN interviewed the guy's brother this morning, and it was equal parts heart wrenching and hilarious.

"I could hear him hollering for help," "My old lady turned on the light," "He was my brother, man!" The guy was really broken up, and I felt so bad, but he was also the most stereotypical Florida good old boy that I couldn't stop grinning.
Click to expand...

Yeah, let's make fun of a man who lost his brother in a freak accident cuz he speaks funny.
 
Z

Zoolader

Member
I live in Hillsborough county, seen a few sinkholes in my lifetime. Outside my old neighborhood there was a reoccurring sinkhole every few years in the middle of a small road near my house. It was always scary driving over that section knowing there was a possibility of swallowing the car. There was a story a couple years back, not sure where it was, where a whole house went into a sinkhole killing an entire family.
 
U

Unicorn

Member
Arcipello said:
florida did this to itself... its all caused by the crazy amount of ground water pumping they do in order to get fresh water.

just a few pics of other florida sinkholes

6a010536a57ad4970c0133ef75d207970b-800wi.jpg


home_ph1_BIG.jpg


sinkhole%20BIG.jpg


Picture_1(1).png
Click to expand...

Yup. It is in no way a natural disaster. Sink holes never occur without humans causing them.

Edit:

urrrr, Fissures aren't natural. Sinkholes are.

sorry, about 2 years since I took a Geology class.
 
A

ari

Banned
I can already imagine the urban legends in that town.

wow, that shaq poster is the reason i stop coming here on gaf. What a fucking Ahole.
 
T

TheDrizzlerJ11

Member
The Floridan Aquifer is yellow,
f8936.jpg
Click to expand...
And where Sinkholes happen in Florida
Sinkhole-20Occurance.jpg
Click to expand...



South Fl proving it's best Fl once again.

Tampa Bay itself is actually believed to be a huge sinkhole that connected a lake to the Caribbean. No idea how much of it is natural due to the Floridan Aquifer or if it's because of how much Spring water we pump out of the Floridan Aquifer, but I'm sure it's a bit of both.
 
G

GoldenEye 007

Member
TheDrizzlerJ11 said:
South Fl proving it's best Fl once again.

Tampa Bay itself is actually believed to be a huge sinkhole that connected a lake to the Caribbean. No idea how much of it is natural due to the Florida Aquifer or if it's because of how much Spring water we pump out of the Florida Aquifer, but I'm sure it's a bit of both.
Click to expand...

Not sure. But I'm sure the Bay of Tampa was a bay well before anyone started pumping spring water! So probably a combo of both assuming Tampa Bay was created in part by a sinkhole like you suggest.
 
T

TheDrizzlerJ11

Member
GoldenEye 007 said:
Not sure. But I'm sure the Bay of Tampa was a bay well before anyone started pumping spring water! So probably a combo of both assuming Tampa Bay was created in part by a sinkhole like you suggest.
Click to expand...

Yup, that's my logic too. It's a natural problem that might be made worst by all the pumping. Asphalt companies and their limestone quarries share some of that blame somehow too, I'm sure.
 
V

Vilam

Maxis Redwood
Jesus, that interview is terrible. Reporters should have the decency to just stop asking questions in situations like that.
 
kutthoat5150

kutthoat5150

Member
those pictures of sinkholes freak me out the same way as looking at close up pictures of insects, that is seriously some scary stuff
 
Y

Yagharek

Member
LuchaShaq said:
There are 7 billion people.


We can afford to lose a few not to mention he wasn't some great mind that was going to cause world peace.


Making nice posts instead of jokes won't bring him back.
Click to expand...

And your contribution to society is...?

Show some class, no one deserves to die like that.
 
N

Nesotenso

Member
LuchaShaq said:
There are 7 billion people.


We can afford to lose a few not to mention he wasn't some great mind that was going to cause world peace.


Making nice posts instead of jokes won't bring him back.
Click to expand...

his loved ones don't feel that way and had some worth for him even if he wasn't going to bring about world peace
 
W

wsoxfan1214

Banned
LuchaShaq said:
There are 7 billion people.


We can afford to lose a few not to mention he wasn't some great mind that was going to cause world peace.


Making nice posts instead of jokes won't bring him back.
Click to expand...

This is disgusting on so many levels. What the fuck is wrong with you?
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
I don't think my brain could even process losing one of my brothers to the fucking ground.

Like, I'd understand how sinkholes work. But the idea that your brother was safe in his bed one moment then instantly buried the next to the point that nobody can recover his body the next would probably require me to be drugged into a coma because my hysteria would be out of control.
 
E

EvilDick34

Banned
This is the kind of stuff that would give me nightmares. I'm just trying to imagine living below a limestone cavern that gives in, *SHUDDER*.
 
I

Inanna

Not pure anymore!
Volimar said:
Home of Florida man devoured by sinkhole to be demolished

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/03/us/florida-sinkhole/index.html

The body won't be recovered.
Click to expand...

Yeah, saw this on Beeb news this morning at work. Neighbours will never return to their homes too. Fucking heartbreaking.

I had a recurring dream about this for about 3 years in my teens. I'd just be walking along and all of a sudden I'd be swallowed by this sudden chasm opening up beneath me. I'd just be trapped, fully concious, not in any pain, but aware that there was no way anyone could get me out, and that I would die there, alone in the dark. Never been more glad to wake up in my life.

Serious lack of empathy in this thread.
 
P

polyh3dron

Banned
Come on people, someone died here. Have some respect.

The only acceptable way for a thread of this nature to play out is for all replies to the OP to be variations of:

This was unfortunate. RIP.
Click to expand...
 
Y

Yagharek

Member
I'm just annoyed that tactless arseholes cant help themselves and feel the need to pretend like it doesn't matter. No respect, no empathy.

A few people need to take a long hard look at themselves.
 
M

MrDenny

Member
LuchaShaq said:
There are 7 billion people.


We can afford to lose a few not to mention he wasn't some great mind that was going to cause world peace.


Making nice posts instead of jokes won't bring him back.
Click to expand...
Disgusting, what are you even trying say with this post.
He was a loved one to someone, his brother jumped in trying to rescue him.
You sir, are a douche.
 
Dice

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Florida is highly prone to sinkholes because there are caverns below ground of limestone, a porous rock that easily dissolves in water.
"You can almost envision a piece of Swiss cheese," Taylor Yarkosky, a sinkhole expert from Brooksville, Fla., said while gesturing to the ground and the sky blue home where the earth opened in Seffner. "Any house in Florida could be in that same situation."
Click to expand...
As if I didn't have enough reasons to avoid Florida for the rest of my life.
 
B

Brazil

Living in the shadow of Amaz
Yagharek said:
I'm just annoyed that tactless arseholes cant help themselves and feel the need to pretend like it doesn't matter. No respect, no empathy.

A few people need to take a long hard look at themselves.
Click to expand...

That, or lose someone they care about so they grow up a little bit.

Hopefully they'll grow up without having to lose anyone, though.
 
J

jezebella

Neo Member
i live about 5 miles from where this happened. in brandon, fl. i am petrified now. the house had sinkhole insurance and a survey certifying it safe was conducted in august.
 
M

Mael

Member
LuchaShaq said:
There are 7 billion people.


We can afford to lose a few not to mention he wasn't some great mind that was going to cause world peace.


Making nice posts instead of jokes won't bring him back.
Click to expand...

Let's see how you dig yourself out of this one...

Seriously it's nightmare fuel at its highest, what can you even do when that happens?
 
C

Camp Lo

Banned
Origami Superman said:
Wow. Are these things common in other parts of the USA, or mainly just Florida?

and RIP
Click to expand...

Any place where the water levels are really high like Mississippi and Louisiana.

Florida has an extremely high level and the type of concrete used to escape high cost don't "require" steel mesh. His house used that concrete so that on top of a lot of areas built on muck, everyone is at risk here.

There's a sinkhole that almost swallowed up part of an interstate here that was sectioned off.

They happen all the time and it's really unnerving.
 
S

Savitar

Member
I imagine being swallowed up by the ground to be one of the most terrifying things you could ever go through, everything caving in around you, dirt and dust filling your mouth, nostrils. Then silence and pressure of everything surrounding and burying you. Imagine the panic a person goes through, nothing to laugh about.
 
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