Pictured: First haunting look INSIDE 100ft sinkhole that swallowed Florida man after it opened up under his house as he slept

  • Jeff Bush, 37, was sucked into the hole under his home in February
  • Footage taken by a contractor shows the damaged room for the first time
  • Coats, hats and shelves still hang on the wall above huge sinkhole
  • The house was later demolished and Bush's body was never recovered

By Lydia Warren

PUBLISHED: 15:32 EST, 2 April 2013 | UPDATED: 14:09 EST, 3 April 2013


Unsettling video footage has given the first look into the massive sinkhole that opened up beneath a Florida home and swallowed a man from his bed in February.

Jeff Bush, 37, was sucked into the sinkhole while he slept in his family home in Seffner and when his brother, Jeremy, jumped in the hole to try to save him, he was nowhere to be seen.

Footage taken by a contractor who examined the hole shortly before the home was demolished has now been released by the county, and shows that every piece of furniture has vanished.

Most bizarre is how the ground has completely given way - revealing the brown dirt beneath - yet hats, high-visibility jackets and shelves remain on the wall above where Bush's bed once was.

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Frightening: A bird's eye view shot shows the sinkhole which swallowed Jeff Bush from his bed in February

Frightening: A bird's eye view shot shows the sinkhole which swallowed Jeff Bush from his bed in February

A day after the accident, authorities stopped their search for Bush as tests showed no sign of life in the hole. The house has now been torn down and the family hopes to set up a memorial at the site.

Neighbours left their properties and the county has said that the houses on each side of the sinkhole house will have to be condemned, Fox News reported.

 

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'The results of the geophysical tests concluded that the subsurface soils were unstable as subsidence activity is evidenced at each site,' County Administrator Michael Merrill said.

He added that residents should speak with engineers before they try to collect their belongings.

Sinkhole
Jeff Bush, sinkhole

Bizarre: Hats are still hanging on a doorknob in the bedroom in Seffner, Florida yet the ground beneath the wall has completely vanished. The freak accident claimed the life of 37-year-old Jeff Bush, right

Gone: This video still shows the hanging hats, left, above the massive hole in the ground. The video was taken by a contractor shortly before the home was demolished last month

Gone: This video still shows the hanging hats, left, above the massive hole in the ground. The video was taken by a contractor shortly before the home was demolished last month

Bush, 37, was in his bedroom in Seffner - a suburb of 8,000 people 15 miles east of downtown Tampa - when the earth opened up on the night of February 28.

Five others in the house escaped unharmed.

Jeremy Bush, 36, recalled how he desperately tried to pull his brother, Jeff, from the rubble as he heard his screams for help.

'I ran in there and heard somebody screaming, my brother screaming, and I ran in there,' he told My Fox Tampa Bay .

'And all I see is this big hole. All I see is the top of his bed. I didn't see anything else, so I jumped in the hole and tried getting him out.

sinkhole

Hidden: The hole was largely hidden beneath the home but was seen as the property was demolished

Bush

Crushed: Demolition experts watched as the Bush's home was destroyed three days after his death

'The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn't care. I wanted to save my brother. I could hear him screaming for me, hollering for me. I couldn't do nothing.'

Jeremy had tried to save his brother when he heard him screaming, but was unable to reach him. A deputy pulled Jeremy out of the sinkhole, and likely saved his life.

Following the tragedy, Jeremy Bush said he believed the rescue teams should not have given up so soon.

'I feel like they could have tried harder to get my brother out of there,' he said. 'That was my brother. No one is even talking about what my mom and dad are going through. They don't want to be on camera. My mom and dad are going through hell right now.'

Bush

Break down: Jeremy Bush, right, told reporters that not enough was done to get his brother Jeff out of a sinkhole during an emotional interview as the family house was demolished

Bush

Remembered: Jeremy Bush set up a makeshift memorial for his brother before demolition began

The 20-foot-wide opening of the sinkhole was almost covered by the house, and rescuers said there were no signs of life after the hole opened.

Experts say thousands of sinkholes erupt yearly in Florida because of the state's unique geography, though most are small and deaths rarely occur.

'There's hardly a place in Florida that's immune to sinkholes,' said Sandy Nettles, who owns a geology consulting company. 'There's no way of ever predicting where a sinkhole is going to occur.'

DANGER UNDERGROUND: WHY DO SINKHOLES OCCUR?

Watch out: Florida, Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania are the states most affected by sinkholes, according to the U.S. Geological Survey

Watch out: Florida, Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania are the states most affected by sinkholes, according to the U.S. Geological Survey

A sinkhole is a hole that opens up suddenly in the ground. They mostly occur because of erosion or underground water that gathers naturally or due to man-made activities.

When this water dissolves the foundation beneath the surface layer, spaces and caverns develop underground. Limestone, carbonate rock, and salt beds are particular vulnerable to this erosion.

Meanwhile, the top layer of Earth usually stays intact. When the dissolving area beneath the surface becomes too large, the surface suddenly gives way.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Florida, Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania are the states most affected by sinkholes.

While they often occur from natural causes, sinkholes can be man-made and caused by human activity. Groundwater pumping and construction are the most likely culprits. They can also occur when water drainage systems are changed.

Source: USGS

 

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it's time they put the plug back in those sinkholes!

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Even if this wasn't due to fracking, please research fracking for yourself and the associated problems that come with fracking, just an example - contaminating drinking water for a start. Check out on youtube the videos of people who run there taps and can light a match and it will ignite. They are saying that is caused by fracking. I wish people cared more for our environment - like Lord Attenborough said recently - we need to start now, the earth has been ruined. to a point of no return.

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I'm sorry, the hole doesn't seem deep enough. Something weird happened here.

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@ Lucy. I see nothing, left or right, paused or playing.

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To all you idiots talking about fracking and mining causing this......This incident happened in Seffner, Florida. Not a lot of oil or mining there. In Florida, we have this thing called an AQUIFER, that erodes the limestone, causing voids that sometimes collapse. =Sinkholes.

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I have often tried to comment about the amont of solid substance the human race has converted to gas and that it MUST begin to have an effect upon the equilibrium of the planet. Moving so much solid mass from one place to another AND converting so, so much of it to gas IS GOING TO BE OUR UNDOING.

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Oh,for the love of God, another use of "haunting" in the headline. Why is it necessary to add redundant words? What's wrong with "First look inside"? And that goes for "hilarious", "awesome", "amazing", and "stunning" too.....

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Fracking hell

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I believe man's intensive mining over the past hundred or so years, has seriously damaged the earth's crust, by extracting oil, coal etc, which was naturally created across millennia, which also controlled and decided our environment above, has weakened the earth's crust. We have made it like a lump of cheese, full of holes, and sieve like, in areas, porous... in other dryer climes, sand like and constantly shifting. We have destabilised our planets surface quite seriously, and now, by extracting shale, we are really finishing the job off. What took so long to form, made our planet what it is, made it possible for all varied life forms to survive, creating every biological survival tool we/they need. By mining this all out, we have changed our planets entire structure, almost as if we mined a human body and extracted all its DNA. We have left little for the balance, and made the crust like a person who has Eczema, and no amount of shoring up with salving lotions, will ever heal it now!

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Huge majority of the UK is going to experience this soon due to the level of mining which has gone on for hundreds of years. The amount of new homes which are being built on top of 'filled-in' mineshafts really frightens me. The whole development could just disappear into the ground, perhaps in 50 years from now, perhaps in 100 years, perhaps in 5 years! Always worth finding out what your home is built upon, but part of the problem is there aren't records to help you clarify!

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