Sinkhole stops growing after swallowing 2 Florida homes
July 16, 2017 by admin
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LAND O’ LAKES, Fla. – A sinkhole that swallowed two homes and a boat has stopped growing, and officials said they would monitor it over the weekend before determining when cleanup can begin.
The hole has been stagnant since Friday afternoon, said Kevin Guthrie, Pasco County’s assistant administrator for public safety. He confirmed that the hole, which is 250 feet wide and 50 feet deep, is the largest in three decades in the county, which has a history of sinkholes.
“Our hearts and thoughts go out to everyone in this community,” Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco said, according to CBS affiliate WTSP-TV. “This is Mother Nature and we don’t know where it’s going to go.”
Dramatic video showed the home in Land O’ Lakes, north of Tampa, collapsing into the hole Friday morning. It quickly engulfed one home and a boat and then consumed about 80 percent of another home.
A house destroyed by the sinkhole on Ocean Pines Drive in Land O’ Lakes, Florida, July 14, 2017.
Guthrie said 11 homes in all have been affected. A third home lost about 45 feet of driveway and a septic tank.
All three homeowners had insurance, he added. No injuries have been reported.
State geologists and environmental officials will continue to monitor the sinkhole over the weekend before determining when cleanup can begin.
The scene is being considered a hazardous materials incident because of possible septic tank issues and building debris. Guthrie said that chemicals from at least three septic tanks are in the sinkhole.
Cleanup will likely take weeks while repairs to the road and the damaged lots will take months.
Jared Hill of the Pasco County Sheriff’s office said that deputies helped one of the homeowners retrieve some items on Friday night and that they would help with the other home on Saturday.
“This is a very catastrophic event,” Hill said. “One resident was going to go on vacation and now that has changed. Now they are trying to get as much out as they can so they can move on with their lives.”
Aerial view of a giant sinkhole that opened up in a Land O’ Lakes, Florida, neighborhood on July 14, 2017.
County property records show there was a sinkhole at the property where the first house was swallowed up, and that it had been stabilized in 2014. The home was sold in 2015, according to records. Messages left for its owner were not immediately returned Friday.
Sinkholes are stabilized by boring holes into the ground and injecting concrete.
Records also show a sinkhole was stabilized at the partially destroyed home in 2007. Two sisters renting that home with four other family members said they had left the house early Friday and returned to see their neighbor’s home falling into the sinkhole.
The Tampa Bay Times reported that Edilia and Theresa Villa and their relatives had time to retrieve important documents and six dogs from their house before officials declared it unsafe. Theresa Villa’s 15-year-old daughter, Thalia Chapman, told the newspaper the family moved into the home after arriving from Cuba about a decade ago.
Officials said Duke Energy has restored power to the neighborhood.
Giant sinkholes
This sudden nightmare phenomena swallows cars and homes and can the loss of life
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Turkey coup anniversary: Emotional Erdogan hails ‘defenders of nation’
July 16, 2017 by admin
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EPA
Tens of thousands went to the bridge in Istanbul that has become a landmark of the failed coup
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has delivered an emotional address to tens of thousands of people in Istanbul on the anniversary of a failed coup.
Mr Erdogan said: “People that night did not have guns, they had a flag and more importantly, they had their faith.”
He backed the death penalty for coup plotters and said they should wear Guantanamo Bay-style uniforms.
Some 250 people died and 2,196 were wounded fighting the coup attempt by an army faction on 15 July last year.
The government has since dismissed more than 150,000 state employees, saying it is rooting out coup supporters.
Critics say the dismissals, and a wave of 50,000 arrests, are part of an attempt to purge dissent.
- The human impact of Turkey’s purges
- The officers who cannot go home
Mr Erdogan was addressing tens of thousands of Turks who had rallied to the bridge over the Bosphorus where civilians had confronted pro-coup soldiers last year.
He said: “I am grateful to all members of my nation who defended their country.”
Mr Erdogan said that 250 people had lost their lives but the country had won its future.
“Putschists who closed off the bridge on that night wanted to show the world that they were in control,” he said, but were countered by “millions who took to the streets that night to defend the honour of their nation”.
He said he would “break the heads of the traitors” who plotted the coup.
Mr Erdogan also said he had spoken to Prime Minister Binali Yildirim about the coup plotters, saying: “When they appear in court, let’s make them appear in uniform suits like in Guantanamo.”
The president then unveiled a “martyrs’ memorial” at the bridge, which has been renamed the Bridge of the Martyrs of July 15.
He is now returning to Ankara to address parliament after midnight (21:00 GMT), at the exact time last year it was attacked by coup plotters.
The president will end proceedings by unveiling a monument to the coup’s victims at his palace in the capital at dawn.
The date of 15 July has been declared an annual holiday.
Earlier Mr Yildirim told a special session of parliament that 15 July 2016 was a “second War of Independence”, following the conflict that led to the creation of the modern state in the 1920s.
“It has been exactly one year since Turkey’s darkest and longest night was transformed into a bright day, since an enemy occupation turned into the people’s legend,” Mr Yildirim said.
However, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, condemned the government’s actions since the coup.
He said: “This parliament, which withstood bombs, has been rendered obsolete and its authority removed. In the past year, justice has been destroyed. Instead of rapid normalisation, a permanent state of emergency has been implemented.”
Turkey’s trauma after night of the tanks
On 15 July last year, the coup plotters, armed with tanks, warplanes and helicopters, declared that they had taken over on state media, and bombed parliament and other key locations.
They tried to detain Mr Erdogan as he holidayed in an Aegean resort, but he had left and the coup was thwarted by civilians and soldiers loyal to the president.
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EPA
President Erdogan inspected the honour guard ahead of special session of parliament in Ankara
The Turkish authorities accused a movement loyal to the Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, of organising the plot.
Mr Gulen, who remains in the United States, denies any involvement.
Washington has so far resisted calls from the Turkish authorities to extradite him.
The BBC’s Turkey correspondent, Mark Lowen, says that, a year on, the unity against the coup has faded, and divisions over the rule of law have widened. For half of the country, he says, 15 July was its rebirth; for the other half, its aftermath is killing off what was left of Turkish democracy.
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AFP
Civilians, as those here on the Bosphorus bridge, helped defy the coup last year
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Getty Images
This poster shows the faces of men and women who were killed on the night of the coup attempt in Istanbul
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AFP
Billboards like this one paying tribute to the “Legend of 15 July” have been erected
Critics say Mr Erdogan is using the purges to stifle political dissent, and last week hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Istanbul at the end of a 450km (280-mile) “justice” march against the government.
The president accused the marchers of supporting terrorism.
On Friday, the government continued its dismissal of state employees, sacking another 7,395 for alleged links to what it calls terrorist groups.