Florida
man swallowed by sinkhole
Rescuers
in Florida put engineering equipment into the sinkhole but fail to
find 'anything compatible with life'.
1
March, 2013
A
Florida man screamed for help and disappeared as a large sinkhole
opened under his bedroom, his brother said Friday. No signs of life
have been found.
Jeremy
Bush heard a loud crash and screaming. He said it took him seconds to
get to his brother Jeff's room near midnight Thursday, but the earth
had already swallowed him.
Jeremy
Bush said he jumped into the hole and was quickly up to his neck in
dirt.
"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. "But I
just couldn't do nothing."
He
added: "He was screaming my name. I could swear I heard him
hollering my name to help him."
An
arriving law enforcement officer pulled him to safety. "I
reached down and was able to actually able to get him by his hand and
pull him out of the hole. The hole was collapsing. At that time, we
left the house," Hillsborough County Sheriff's Deputy Douglas
Duvall said.
"When
he got there, there was no bedroom left," Hillsborough County
Fire Rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico said. "There was no
furniture. All he saw was a piece of the mattress sticking up."
There's
been no contact with 36-year-old Jeff Bush since then, and neighbors
on both sides of the home have been evacuated.
"We
put engineering equipment into the sinkhole and didn't see anything
compatible with life," Damico said. But Damico would not say
that the man is presumed dead.
Damico
estimated that the sinkhole was about 30 feet (9 meters) across.
"The
entire house is on the sinkhole," Damico said.
Sinkholes
are common in seaside Florida, whose underlying limestone and
dolomite can be worn away by water and chemicals, then collapse.
Authorities on Friday said they used equipment especially for such
situations that can detect sounds as faint as a mouse running over a
floor.
But
the equipment detected nothing from the missing man.
From
the outside of the house, nothing appeared wrong. There were no
cracks, and the only sign something was amiss was the yellow caution
tape circling the house.
Hillsborough
County Sheriff's Office spokesman Larry McKinnon said Friday they
asked sinkhole and engineering experts to come to the home. The
experts are using equipment to see if the ground can support the
weight of heavy machinery that is needed for the recovery effort.
Janell
Wheeler told the Tampa Bay Times newspaper she was inside the house
with four other adults and a child when the sinkhole opened. "It
sounded like a car hit my house," she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.