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Florida Sinkholes 2013

It sounded like a thunderstorm as windows broke and the ground shook, but vacationers who were awakened at a resort villa near Orlando, Fla., soon realized the building was starting to collapse — parts of it swallowed by a 100-foot sinkhole that also endangered two neighboring buildings. By early Monday, nearly a third of the structure at Summer Bay Resort had collapsed. All 105 guests staying in the villa were evacuated, as were those in the neighboring buildings. Security guard Richard Shanley had just started his shift, and he heard what sounded like shouting from a building. A guest flagged him down to report that a window had blown out. Shanley reported it to management, and another window popped. The resort's staff decided to evacuate the villa. Shanley said the building seemed to sink by 10 to 20 inches and bannisters began to fall off the building as he ran up and down three floors trying to wake up guests. The first portions of the building to sink were the walkways and the elevator shaft, Gade said. "You could see the ground falling away from the building where the building started leaning," Gade said. Then, as a part of the leaning building crumbled quickly into the ground, dust shot up around the site, amateur video of the collapse shows (http://bit.ly/1cuOc1u). In one of the adjacent buildings, firefighters and police officers knocking on doors woke up Maggie Moreno of San Antonio. "The building was just snapping." Luis Perez also was staying at a nearby building. Over the next five hours, sections of the building sank into the ground. Paul Caldwell, the development's president, said the resort gave all affected guests other rooms. The Red Cross also distributed food, clothing and medicines to vacationers who had lost their belongings in their resort rooms. There were no signs before Sunday that a sinkhole was developing, Caldwell said. Geologist Scott Purcifull told CBS News a sinkhole this size is not that common, but they're difficult to predict. The resort — with condominiums, two-bedroom villas and vacation houses in addition to standard rooms — has about 900 units spread over a large area about 10 miles west of Walt Disney World. Problems with sinkholes are ongoing in Florida. They cause millions of dollars in damage in the state annually. On March 1, a sinkhole underneath a house in Seffner, about 60 miles southwest of the Summer Bay Resort, swallowed a man who was in his bed. Last week, Florida received a $1.08 million federal grant to study the state's vulnerability to sinkholes. Other states sit atop limestone in a similar way, but Florida has additional factors like extreme weather, development, aquifer pumping and construction.

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