Sinkhole Swallows Part of a Building at a Resort in Florida
A hole 60 feet across and 15 feet deep opened at the Summer Bay Resort in Clermont, Fla., late Sunday night.
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: August 12, 2013
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In the realms of fantasy near Walt Disney World, disaster rides abound. But no one would buy a ticket for the real-life sinkhole adventure that swallowed part of a building in nearby Clermont, Fla., early Monday and sent hundreds of vacationers out into the night.
A guest flagged down a security guard shortly after 11 p.m. to say that a window in her villa “had just broken, inexplicably,” said Paul Caldwell, the president of the resort, Summer Bay. “As he stood talking to her, two or three more windows broke.” The guard began evacuating the building and those around it, as did emergency crews that arrived soon after.
At midnight, he said, the central section of the three-story building collapsed into the sinkhole, estimated to be as much as 60 feet across and 15 feet deep. “Everyone was out, no one was injured,” Mr. Caldwell said. But the 14-year-old building “probably will be a total loss.”
Amy Jedele, a holistic practitioner and counselor from Denville, N.J., was staying at a building connected by a breezeway to the sinking building. When she and her fiancé, Darren Gade, heard screams and noises, they thought the commotion might be coming from a television. After hearing sirens, they stepped outside and saw the ground sinking from Building 104. “There was just no earth underneath it at all,” Ms. Jedele said. “It was just hovering.” Then sections of the building tumbled into the growing hole.
Tommy Carpenter, the manager for the Lake County Emergency Management Division, said, “Sinkholes are, unfortunately, a reality of living in Florida,” which is rich in karst — formations that include layers of soluble rock, mainly limestone, under the soil.
In late February, a man was killed when his bedroom was swallowed by a sinkhole beneath his home in Seffner, Fla., outside Tampa. His body was never recovered.
Randall Orndorff of the United States Geological Survey said that in the area between Tampa and Orlando, often called “sinkhole alley,” four other sinkholes had been reported since the spring. But none was this destructive.
Commercial development and agricultural concerns could be accelerating the problem, Mr. Orndorff said. “Once you start paving those parking lots and roads, putting up houses,” he said, “all that water runs off and is collected in ditches and storm drains, and it has to go underground in, basically, a torrent.” And the torrents cut channels in the weak rock, he said.
Development requires pumping enormous amounts of water out of the ground, which can contribute to the area’s vulnerability. “We have changed the environment,” Mr. Orndorff said. “Are we increasing the number of sinkholes? We don’t know. But as we develop into