THAT SUCKING SOUND YOU HEAR?

That would be Florida.

(Thanks to Susy Cruz)

Comments

[Susy Cruz]

kewl!! welcome!

[Susy Cruz]

wow..first too! YAY

[AlaskaMe]

I thought California was suppose to go first not Florida.

[Eleanor]

"My understanding is, if it's a natural phenomena, it's not the county's responsibility," said Jay Jarvis, drainage manager with the Polk County Natural Resources Division.

It warms my heart to see a bureaucrat being sooooo compassionate!

[Annie Where-but-here]

These happen all the time down there. Some day they'll get their act together and have a sinkhole swallow up the anacondas and gators trying to escape the forest fires and hurricanes.

[Susy Cruz]

Ahh...Living in S. Fl. sure is FUN!!!

[blurkernomore]

Hurricanes, gators, rabid squirrels, humidity you can't cut with a Rambo knife and now you gotta worry about walking along and being sucked into middle earth??!!!
I'll stay in Montana thankyouverymuch.

[fivver]

When I was a kid in Bartow (near Lakeland) a sinkhole ate our school playground.

[Matt]

Weren't there sinkholes in the series Surface last year? Right before giant, genetically engineered creatures that couldn't be killed came up and ate everyone? Ya'll have fun.

[Annie Where-but-here]

Let's see:
Hurricane season
Sinkhole season
Anaconda/gator season
Fire season

Yup - sounds like the earthquake, mudslide, fire, and flood seasons we have out here in SoCAL.

[Dr Alice]

Swallowing a lake?! Doesn't that only happen in fairy tales or something?

And Eleanor... You beat me to it. What a quote.

[Schadeboy]

This is the very exact reason why I don't live in Florida. Well, one of them, anyway.

[Shane's Girl]

Hey Annie- while they're swallowing up the gators and anacondas, how about some of those Florida politicians- they're ALMOST reptiles.

[Susy Cruz]

Annie...I lived in Pasadena years ago and thought the same thing - made me feel right at home!!

What about the rock slides and Acid Rain????

[Shane's Girl]

OOP"S that was nasty. I'd better clarify, I'm a Florida native, so it's not like I'm bashing somebody else's state!

[crossgirl]

$300,000 lake front lot
$1,000,000 mini mansion
$65,000 in jet ski's and boats
watching your exclusive gated community's lake disappear beneath the ground.....PRICELESS!
(at least for those of us on the less desirable side of town! snicker, snicker)

[Sallyacious]

Technical (and unfunny) question:

How does a sinkhole open up under a lake? I used to live in Portland, OR, and there they'd swallow roads and parking lots. But that's because runoff created a hole underneath something solid.

How does this happen under a lake? I mean, I would think it would just soak up the runoff water.

[Annie Where-but-here]

Most of Florida consists of limestone or dolomite, which are carbonate rock. Rainwater is slightly acidic and will eat away at carbonate rock...slowly....underground...until something gives way.

[Sallyacious]

Ahhhh. Thanks Annie WBH. That makes sense then. There's still a lake, it's just much further underground now.

[Anniver]

This is happening in MY neighborhood. My family lives just up the hill. I went home from college for Father's Day last weekend. You can imagine my surprise: "Hey, Mom? Um...What happened to the lake?"

The lake kept on getting smaller before I had to come back to college. I think they're calling it Scott Puddle, now.

The worst part is, not only were the people whose home was destroyed INSIDE WHEN IT HAPPENED, but as the article mentions, the county is refusing to help out. Plus, there are now a few multimillion dollar houses suffering the financial loss associated with suddenly not being lakefront property anymore, and some really silly looking docks over dry ground.

To answer Sallyacious's question:
Sinkholes can open anywhere when your state is one giant limestone sponge. They become more frequent when the water table, which usually fills and supports these underground caverns, becomes depleted.

So, there's really only one solution for us Floridians: Stop drinking water!

[CJrun]

AWBH nailed it, but two other factors are important to picture. Up top, the 'surficial' aquifer is supported by what's called a confining layer; essentially clay. The lake is water in a clay bowl. Down below is the Floridan aquifer [stretches all the way to the Carolinas], in enormous limestone caverns. In a prolonged drought, as we are in now, groundwater in the surficial drops and its contribution to re-charging the Floridan is reduced. When the Floridan drops, it no longer supports the roofs of those limestone caverns as well and the weak points Annie spoke of give way. Drought season is usually sinkhole season. Hmmm; folks build homes around an old sinkhole that becomes a lake, then want answers from the County Drainage people when the sinkhole gets bigger. That guy shoulda said 'Hey lady, drainage ain't your problem. Suckage is.'

[Annie Where-but-here]

So I guess a hurricane would avert any more similar problems? If it's not one thing, it's two or three.

[CJrun]

I vote for two or three hurricanes/ tropical storms. We've got sinkholes opening up all over and firefighters worn out battling wildfires. Groundwater is down so far this year that it will take feet of rain to get our limerocks off.

[Annie Where-but-here]

Do you want flies with that?

[Anniver]

Alas, hurricanes and tropical storms do very little to replenish the aquifers. It all falls (or really, in the case of hurricanes, flies by) too fast to soak in deep enough. The only thing that will replenish the groundwater is lots of gentle showers over the course of years.

Meanwhile, developments are popping up all over the place like chicken pox on a two year old. (I don't want to think of how to extend that metaphor, so I'll drop it there.) The way things are going, sinkholes are likely only to get worse and more frequent.

Welcome to Florida, Land of Unsustainable Development. We didn't invent it, we just voted for it...

...at least, we think we did.

[Andrew]

People should STOP CLICKING THE PICTURE. It says right there below: "Click picture to enlarge."

People keep clicking--the sink hole keeps enlarging.

post hoc, ergo propter hoc???

[Eleanor]

I live south of Annie in su.so.ca. and sinkholes are common. I'm scared to death of them.

I'll take a mild earthquake any day over a sinkhole.

[Matt]

So, what ya'll are telling me is that when I finish up my work in Houston, I do not want to take an assignment in Brooksville, Fl?

[CJrun]

Depends on what you do, Matt. Brooksville is karstic, a regular limerock laboratory. You don't build next to a lake. One of my favorite parts of the state.

What Anniver is talking about is the impossibility of 800-people a day moving into the state and building where previous generations new better than to build. Plus it's rare that we get so many hits by so many intense storms. We do, however, depend on the long, slow rains during the tropical storm season to recharge the sponge. South of the Jacksonville area, Florida only has what rain falls on it. Our biggest river traitorously flows north, out of state to Georgia. We know that's because Georgia sucks.

[fivver]

If you've ever driven I75 past Gainesville, FL you've driven through a huge dry lake bed. You may have noticed on the west side of the road a funny looking radio transmitter that looks kind of like a bowling pin. That's an aircraft navigaional transmitter. I just mention it so you know where I'm talking about. That area used to be a lake with towns around it and and boats shuttling town to town. A sinkhole opened one night and by morning the lake was gone.

[Anniver]

I almost forgot a large portion of my education has been funded by Florida tourism:

Hurricanes are rare and usually not serious! Sinkholes are only an occasional annoyance in the center of the state! Mickey Mouse loves you! Orange juice prevents certain types of cancer! Mosquito repellant works sometimes!

No, what people really should be worried about are palmetto bugs.
(Note: That bug is from South Carolina. Ours in Florida are much more impressive. By which I mean, horrific.)

[djtonyb]

Anniver - I call them PalMUNGO! bugs. Whatever you do call them, they're big, flying cucarachas and a great source of entertainment for our cat. She likes riding them around the living room.

[CJrun]

Rules for living in Florida:

1] Don't crush a 3-inch palmetto bug on a recently mopped floor; why waste the mopping effort?
2] There's a reason a piece of land doesn't have a house on it. Go find an old piece of crap house that has survived. That's probably a good spot.
3] If your looking at a 'new' development with pretty houses and streets that have quaint names, see Rule 2. It's best to look at street names that could not possibly have been made up by a yankee comittee, such as Tchoplolkgers Road. Avoid 'Oakview Lane.'
3] Don't snorkel in water that's deeper than your visibility is long. If your visibility is 3-feet, snorkel skinny. Otherwise your just another dumb@ss news story.
4] Finally, just relax. Otherwise you might as well live up in Montana with Blurk.

[NTTAWWT]

[Anniver]

*snork @ djitonyb*

*snork at CJrun, too* But, re: Rule #3: Why should people deprive Sir Blog of another posting opportunity? I say, go freshwater snorkeling with raw chicken!

Unless there's a sinkhole nearby.

[CJrun]

Anniver: your pulse rate seems to be down from your original post. Much of my family lives in NC, where we refer to people that moved to Florida, then got the hell out, as boomerangs. Gators and sinkholes and snakes and hurricanes are our friends; if the mosquitoes and noseeums don't get 'em first.

[fivver]

CJ in the Georgia mountains we have halfbacks - folks who move to Florida from OH, PA, etc and then move half way back.

[CJrun]

So you get it. Got Hiassen?

[CJrun]

I just had to check. That was fivver, not Anniver. Fivver and Anniver, if you haven't, you should read Dave's collegue Carl Hiassen. I recommend you start at the beginning with 'Tourist Season.' I also recommend you start looking at James W. Hall. Most of his early stuff is hard to find, but when he was first migrating out of poetry into novels is my favorite period. Hall is the lyrics, Hiassen is the splash.

[crossgirl]

matt, of course you do, we have hockey on our tv's over here!

[Anniver]

Yes, please pardon my initial excitement over other people noticing something weird happening in my usually comatose, retiree-laden hometown. I always find great entertainment in how surreal Florida life can seem to other people, and Mr. Barry does a great job of capturing that.

[crossgirl]

apologies to anniver for making light of her families plight. i'm a native and i hate what's become of my town so i'm not real sympathetic. i live in the swamp. no danger of sinkholes here, just routine flooding and no one from the county does anything about that either. but then, the people who've always been here, don't expect them to. it's the ones who don't recognize a bayhead but are thrilled to buy the cheap land in front of one that get surprised every year.

[Anniver]

I should probably have clarified that better: my family was not affected at all by the sinkhole. We don't even know the people who were. We're just the people who live at the top of the hill next to...what used to be the lake. Can't even see it from the house (or anywhere else now, I guess).

So, we pray the people who lost their home have insurance, we pay attention in case there is a need (but honestly, the people who live on that lake are not the type to be needy--they were crying for years to make the lake private, and now suddenly the dirt that's left behind is supposed to be public land?), and we laugh because, well, what else are you gonna do? A huge hole opened up and drank the whole freaking lake!

[crossgirl]

oh well then, that's different. i'll continue snickering then!! truly, if it was in a different neighborhood i'd be more sympathetic. maybe. i'm sure the guy with the cracked foundation has homeowners and they do pay up when it's confirmed there's a sinkhole. of course, they can't replace the view!

[Kathryn Clark]

In San Antonio they turned a "sink-hole" into a sunken garden. And then charged tourists to visit.

[marina_like_a_boatdock]

Hey, did you-all see the story on the Daily about the toxic polluted lake in Butte, and it was the only tourist attraction the state rep could think of???!! Sounds like Montana needs a little of FL's problems.

[blurkernomore]

Why's everbody pickin' on Montana. We never did nuthin' to nobody. Well, unless you count that whole Unabomber thing, but that was a fluke. I think.

[24-aholic]

So the basic moral of the story is "it sucks to be in Florida right now"?