A sinkhole opened up this morning and swallowed someone’s car:
From the Tampa Tribune:
The ground below a driveway reportedly gave way and a car fell into the hole in front of a Holiday home Monday morning, Pasco County officials said. The hole was 10 feet in diameter and 10 feet deep, officials said.
It’s not an OFFICIAL sinkhole yet until the geologists weigh in, but a car was devoured and several homes were evacuated as a precaution. Just another day in Florida.
Please feel free to discuss whatever.
BGinCHI
Wow. Rick Scott has really hollowed out that state.
Amir Khalid
@BGinCHI:
It’s not fair. You shouldn’t win the Internets with the first comment.
scav
Between the waters rising and the earth collapsing . . .
well, watching everyone stand their ground out of this one will be amusing.
kindness
@scav: So that is where the phrase ‘Come Hell and High Water’ comes from?
scav
@kindness: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.
Amir Khalid
This “artist” shouldn’t exhibit any work until he learns how to paint proper portraits.
Villago Delenda Est
“Official” sinkhole or no, it’s going to be, um, difficult for that car to “automobile” it’s way out of whatever it’s in.
May I suggest we call it an “overenthusiastic pothole”?
Felonius Monk
@BGinCHI: Kudos. That was the first thought that came to my mind too.
ETA: Is this sinkhole deep enough to throw Debbie Wasserman Schultz into? Will someone please force her to resign as DNC chairperson.
Tree With Water
Sinkholes are the least of that state’s problems.
Florida is like a relative who is cracking up, and can no longer be reasoned with. As is the entire south, and the national republican party, and maybe, just maybe, the entire country. Somebody really should do something about it.
shelley
Maybe they’ll find out that the car was just trying to find a way to sneak out of Florida.
bemused
That’s not the way you want to feel the earth move beneath your feet.
MomSense
Why can’t sinkholes ever swallow up K Street?
West of the Cascades
@Tree With Water:
I’m all for giving secession another try, only this time we don’t make any effort to keep them. And then build a really tall border fence.
Do auto insurance policies in Florida have a sinkhole exclusion?
Shakezula
Now we know what the next Sci-Fi channel blockbuster will be about:
SINKHOLENADO!
PurpleGirl
If it’s not a sinkhole, I want to know how the worm got from Perfection (NV) to Florida?
Gin & Tonic
@West of the Cascades: In insurance policy language, there is actually a difference between a “sinkhole” and a “catastrophic ground cover collapse.” That’s probably why they have to wait for the official report.
Just One More Canuck
@Shakezula: with sharks flying out of sinkholes
Roger Moore
@MomSense:
Because K Street is already a sinkhole of moral depravity.
Tony J
There’s a joke about Florida sidewalks growing ever more bloodthirsty in there somewhere, but I’m frigged if I can work it out.
boatboy_srq
@West of the Cascades: Not AFAIR. But the base rates are so high the insurers probably have that covered. Relocating cut my insurance costs in half (for better coverage) the first year, and the second year another 30% on top of that: better insurance, higher coverages, lower deductibles, less $$. And FL allows “social metrics” as a modifier for the premiums, so you can be as good a driver as can be and still get scr3w3d by the idjits who happen to buy the same make/model.
boatboy_srq
@MomSense: No wells on K St, so no aquifer depletion. OTOH, much more vulnerable to fracking upstream of there…
Roger Moore
@boatboy_srq:
Wait! “Social metrics” isn’t an excuse to overcharge minorities?
Villago Delenda Est
@PurpleGirl: Obviously, a job for an intelligent man.
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore: Minorities, young folks, old folks, new drivers, old drivers, single folks, recent arrivals to the state, etc etc. Added plus: using those soaks everyone else who just happens to make the same “bad” car-buying decisions. Don’t believe me? Compare rates for Hyundai Sonata, Toyota Yaris, Mini and Saab 9-3. Guess which is cheapest – and which is the most expensive…
Lee
I’ve wonder which insurance will pay for it?
Homeowners or Auto?
shelley
Guess this driveway didn’t believe in ‘stand your ground.’ Badda-bing!!
Hawes
If there’s any Florida left, it wasn’t big enough.
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore: @boatboy_srq: Put more simply: “social metrics” for FL insurers is an excuse to overcharge everybody.
gvg
remember the winter park sink hole. Swallowed an exotic car dealership. Great pictures. Long time ago now. The sinkholes in the middle of a major street in the middle of the night are a more day to day concern. I’ve seen those in the news on streets I drive frequently. fortunately I wasn’t when they happened.
Really they are fairly rare, just…exciting when they happen.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Amir Khalid: I think Betty Cracker has already won the internets for the rest of the year with
last night.
Betty Cracker
@gvg: My mom drove into one of those middle-of-the-night, middle-of-the-road sinkholes once. It wasn’t a car-swallowing sinkhole, fortunately, but it was big enough to bust up the frame pretty badly. Fortunately, she was driving a Ford Maverick at the time, so it was no great loss.
ET
Considering that is looks like that “sinkhole” looks close to the house it isn’t looking good for the long term value of the house.
gvg
I just googled the WP sinkhole to refresh my memory. Swallowed 5 porsches, a camper, a 3 bedroom house and 1/2 an olympic sized pool.
Apparently there was another pretty big one last may in Winter haven and a year ago one swallowed a sleeping man’s bedroom. Don’t know how I missed that news.
Locally there were a couple of axle breakers a few years ago. Sinkholes are fast.
gvg
@ET: There is a house in my parents normally desirable neighborhood that is close to unsalable due to a near sinkhole. You can pay cash and live without insurance but you can’t get a mortgage or home insurance. Asking $120000 in a neighborhood that normally goes from 300,000 to 650,000. No takers.
chopper
@shelley:
boo-urns!
EthylEster
@gvg: Some person in the Tampa area got eaten by one in the last year IIRC. And of course there are many more to come, given the lack of any real controls on water use/abuse in the area.
tybee
eatin’ cars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHCdS7O248g
J R in WV
The Corvette Museum had a sinkhole eat a bunch of collector Corvetts last year.
They brought in cranes and recovered them, but a couple are not-recoverable. The museum has a huge increase in patronage, people coming to look at the hole and the cars they pulled out of the hole.
A Republican Plot?
Now I see more recent info on Yahoo news… oh well…
low-tech cyclist
@gvg:
What I want to know is, what do you do with 1/2 of a swimming pool after a sinkhole has swallowed the other half. I’d think it would be damned hard to keep water in it.
Back in my insufficiently misspent youth, I was a caver (that’s ‘spelunker’ to you non-cavers) in my spare time, and while underwater caving was too risky to be my idea of a good time, I was aware that central Florida was the place to go if you were into that. Basically that part of the state (underground, that is) is a Swiss cheese of limestone, with underground water keeping it from falling in on itself.
So if you pump out the water, we get new cave entrances. (AKA sinkholes.) Win!
Morzer
So Pat Robertson is going to issue a statement explaining that God is punishing Florida for enabling Rick Scott’s thieving sociopathic bearer of false witness ways, right?
opiejeanne
@Amir Khalid: Actually, I think that portrait is not half bad. If only he’d found this love of painting 45 years ago and worked on that, developing whatever artistic talent he may have. Think what we’d have missed.