Hole set to swallow business premises

Press, 12 May 1981, Page 8

Hole set to swallow business premises

NZPA-Reuter Winter Park, Florida The authorities could only watch yesterday as a giant sinkhole — already well over 100 m wide after swallowing a three-bedroofn bungalow, half a swimming pool and six cars — nibbled away at the ground under several businesses, “It has slowed down, but it hasn’t quit,” said Winter Park Fire Captain, Gus Lagarde. “There’s a couple of goodsized baseball fields nearby. We wish it would go in. that direction if it’s going anyplace.” The crater-like hole, estimated at between 140 m and 180 m wide and 38m to 50m deep, had grown about six metres yesterday, a police communications officer said.

The sinkhole developed on Friday night and opened rapidly at the week-end, gulping down the house, cars and

part of a foreign car lot and wrecked the city’s $192,000 municipal swimming pool. Total damages have not been estimated. Three Porsche car owners rented a helicopter in hopes of pulling their cars from the hole but aborted the mission as too risky after a surveillance flight. “Twenty thousand. 40,000 — whatever the car is worth it’s not worth getting someone maimed,” said Bob Govern, whose Porsche 928 was in for repairs when the sinkhole swallowed it.

Yesterday the ground began falling away from below a group of commercial buildings that lost their backs in Sunday's slide and were hanging at the edge of the pit-.

The hole also ate up a sixmetre section of a side street yesterday and was about 16m from the town’s main thoroughfare.