Florida sinkhole grows; no sign of victim

Published: March 03. 2013 4:00AM PST

Engineers worked gingerly Saturday to find out more about a slowly growing sinkhole in Florida that swallowed a man in his bedroom. The 20-foot-wide hole is almost completely covered by the house, and rescuers feared it would collapse on them if they continued the search for the body of Jeff Bush, 37. Bush was in his bedroom Thursday night in Seffner — a suburb of 8,000 people 15 miles east of downtown Tampa — when the earth opened and took him and everything else in his room. On Saturday, the normally quiet neighborhood was jammed with cars as engineers, reporters and curious onlookers came to the scene. Two neighbors’ homes are also compromised by the sinkhole. Demolition of the four-bedroom home will begin today. “At this point," Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill said, “it’s really not possible to recover the body." Experts say thousands of sinkholes form yearly in Florida because of the state’s unique geography, though most are small and deaths rarely occur.
The Associated Press photos

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