Sinkhole that killed a man and swallowed his home in 2013 has reopened in Florida

A sinkhole that took the life and home of a Florida man while he slept has returned for a third time.

Since the death of 37-year-old Florida resident Seffner in 2013, the sinkhole has been surrounded by a chain link fence to protect the residents of the Tampa suburb from further harm.

In a 2015 effort, officials filled the hole with a mixture of gravel and water after it opened for the second time.

However, the sinkhole has grown to be 19 feet (6 meters) wide at its largest — and state data shows that sinkholes in Florida can grow up to 400 feet (121 meters), swallowing cars, businesses, and in one case in 2006, nearby Scott empties Lake.

“None of the homes around it appear to be in any danger,” said Jon-Paul Lavandeira, director of the surrounding Hillsborough County Department of Code Enforcement.

The earth opened up the night of February 28, 2013, when 37-year-old Jeff Bush was consumed by the sinkhole while sleeping in his bedroom in Seffner – a suburb of 8,000 people 15 miles east of downtown Tampa.

Five others escaped the house unharmed as it was partially absorbed by the sinkhole’s maw, including Jeff’s brother, Jeremy, who returned in an attempt to save him.

Jeremy Bush, then 36 years old, recalled trying desperately to pull his brother out of the rubble when he heard Jeff’s cries for help.

“I ran in and I heard someone screaming, my brother screaming, and I ran in,” he said My Fox Tampa Bay .

“And all I see is this big hole. I only see the top of his bed. I couldn’t see anything else so I jumped in the hole and tried to get him out.

Jeff Bush’s body was never recovered from the sinkhole, and his final resting place underground — where Florida’s porous limestone displaced the groundwater that drained his home’s foundations — is still unknown.

With no grave to mourn his brother, the fenced compound has served as a stark reminder of the 2013 tragedy for Jeremy and his family.

“This is the only place I can visit him,” Jeremy Bush told WTSP-TV, St. Petersburg, Florida’s CSB affiliate. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of my brother.”

Paul Lavandeira, director of county code enforcement, told the Associated Press that another attempt will be made to fill the sinkhole with water and gravel.

“This is not uncommon, what we see here,” Lavandeira said. “Last night we got a call about the Depression reopening, so we responded in conjunction with Fire Rescue and the Sheriff’s Office.”

“We determined that the adjacent properties were safe,” said Lavandeira. “If there’s a recurrence, it’s in a controlled area. It stays there.’

Sinkholes cost insurers in Florida alone $1.4 billion between 2006 and 2010, according to the state’s Office of Insurance Regulation.

The phenomenon arises from the interaction between the porous limestone and other carbonate rocks that absorb the high marshy coastal water table and top-heavy pressure on these volatile subsurface sediments.

“There’s hardly a place in Florida that’s immune to sinkholes,” said geological consultant Sandy Nettles, “there’s no way to ever predict where a sinkhole will form.”

While many sinkholes are quite small and deaths are rare, some of the state’s sinkhole events have gobbled up areas the size of a block.

A infamous 1981 sinkhole in Winter Park near Orlando, grew to 400 feet in diameter and swallowed five cars, two businesses, a three-bedroom house, nearby streets and the deep end of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

While there’s no indication yet that the Seffner sinkhole could reach that level of damage, Lavandeira expressed his view that the hole will very likely reopen one day in the future.

“This is Mother Nature,” he remarked. “This is not a man-made event.”