Fla. Sinkhole Swallows 4 Pavement Lanes

[HeeBGBz]

Fla. Sinkhole Swallows 4 Pavement Lanes

"DELTONA, Fla. - A sinkhole opened beneath a road in central Florida on Saturday, swallowing four lanes of pavement and forcing the evacuation of 20 homes. "

Thats creepy. The ground is swallowing up Florida.

[RPM]

1. bah

good riddance

(just joking - going to Naples next week)

[Nay]

2. Happens all the time. FL is honeycombed with underground

limestone formations that can collapse. It happened when I was a kid living there 40 years ago.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. Deltona is a developer/wetland nightmare. There must have been

a lot of funny business going on during construction approvals. Worm activity.

[flyingfysh]

4. Much of Florida is that way

There are several open sinkholes on the campus of the University of Florida. Sometimes I would sit and watch the alligator who lived in one of them.

[T Roosevelt]

5. It's an indication of a larger problems

As the aquifer and other underground water sources drop, sinkholes become more likely. Not saying this was the reason, but I would bet we'll be seeing more and more of them...

[Dudley_DUright]

6. Great, my wife (Nell) goes right by there on her commute to work

and there are very few good alternate routes. Deltona is a maze of winding streets that often deadend due to I-4 running through part of the town. I use to get lost in there on my bike and it would take hours to find my way back out again.

BTW, here is a more detailed article from the local paper (Daytona Beach):

A sinkhole that started out in the westbound lanes of Howland Boulevard in front of Deltona High School suddenly expanded Saturday morning, claiming all four lanes of the road, threatening houses and causing power to be shut off to about 2,000 homes.

Estimated to be 50 feet deep and 150 to 160 feet wide, the sinkhole caused the evacuation of 20 homes in the Timbercrest subdivision north of Howland Boulevard, although by day's end the residents of all but three homes on Boxelder Street were allowed to return.

The sinkhole also claimed a Progress Energy transmission line tower. Crews cut power to the pole to reduce the danger that could result if the pole were to topple over, said utility spokesman C.J. Drake. By mid-afternoon, he said, power had been restored to all customers.

Volusia County spokesman Dave Byron said the cave-in occurred at 9:30 a.m. Geotechnical consultants, who've been monitoring the area since the depression was noticed earlier in the week, will make more test borings as soon as it's safe to do so in an effort to determine when the sinkhole stabilizes.

more...

http://www.news-journalonline.com/breakingnews/hole.htm

[gaia_gardener]

7. The bad part of this is that

the people who own houses there are probably screwed. Ground movement is not generally covered under homeowner's insurance. In OK we have problems with coal mines collapsing (the timbers are rotting and giving way). I know of at least 2 people who have homes that are now uninhabitable and they are screwed. They've let the bank foreclose (which screws their credit, but they have no real choice).

[peacetalksforall]

8. Edgar Caycee predicted a separation of the peninsula. Read it many,.

many years ago....just can't remember the details. There is a history of sinkholes in the middle.

[Liberty Belle]

9. In California, where we have mudslides, the running joke is...

If your house is going over the edge, light a match on your way out the door.

Fire is a covered loss; a mudslide is not.