Summer Bay Resort Sinking: Florida Resort Near Disney World Evacuated

[malaise]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/summer-bay-resort-sinking_n_3741856.html
<snip>
As glass broke, the ground shook and lights went out, vacationers evacuated a central Florida resort building before a sinkhole caused a section of the villa to partially collapse early Monday.

About 30 percent of the three-story structure collapsed around 3 a.m. Monday, Lake County Fire Rescue Battalion Chief Tony Cuellar said, and another section was sinking.

Witnesses told The Associated Press they could hear a cracking sound as the villa began sinking. A large crack was visible at the building's base.

Luis Perez, who was staying at a villa near the sinking one, said he was in his room when the lights went off around 11:30 p.m. He said he was on his way to the front desk to report the outage when he saw firefighters and police outside.

[winterpark]

1. Why is everyone reporting that this is near disney? Is that of some significance? BTW

this is happening in Clermont which is west of Orlando in Lake county. Disney is in Southwest/South Central (mapwise) Orlando, in Orange county.

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. whoa! pictures from other websites

from www.gannett-cdn.com



from en.a5bary.com

[malaise]

6. Freaking wow!

Damn

[hobbit709]

3. Just keep on pumping that groundwater.

And Florida will become known as The Land Of Holes.

[malaise]

7. Amazing indeed

[Safetykitten]

4. Giant mousies.

[JI7]

5. is this happening more these days ?

[csziggy]

8. Could be - Central Florida had a long term drought

After all the hurricanes in 2004, they had a long term dry spell. When its real wet, the limestone underground gets eroded and creates caverns. When it dries out, the limestone becomes brittle and the eroded caverns tend to collapse.

Most of Central Florida has limestone under the ground. If you look at maps of the area, there are numerous round lakes from sinkholes. The town I grew up in was once called the "Sinkhole Capital" because of the number that developed in the 1960s. One of my classmates houses was lost to a sinkhole, the editor of the paper narrowly missed being caught by one that took the street he had just driven over, and an elementary school playground lost half its area to one.

Looking at the picture of the collapsed building, though I wonder if it was from improper site preparation rather than a natural sinkhole. The lake is pretty obviously man-made and the building is right behind a drainage pipe. I wonder if the soil was not properly compacted or if the drainage pipe leaked and washed out the dirt under the building.