The two Florida residents whose homes stood on top of a massive sinkhole are finally breathing a sigh of relief after workers and rescue crews labored around the clock to fill in the cavernous pit with a mixture of cement and sand.

The gigantic sinkhole, which had a width of 50 feet and depth of 60 feet, opened up between two homes in the Villages, a wide expanse of land in Florida’s Lake, Marion, and Sumter county, that houses a retirement community. The hole stretched under one driveway, and swallowed up a huge portion of the front yard.

One of the homeowners called Helicon Property Restoration to take over the repair and stabilization of a smaller sinkhole two weeks prior to the appearance of the much bigger sinkhole. The crew had almost carried out the work completely when the huge sinkhole appeared after a rainy Friday night and proceeded to expand.

Helicon workers dumped 15 truckloads of grout into the sinkhole on Saturday, but claimed that it hardly made an improvement on the pit. By Sunday, however, the workers were successful in completely filling the sinkhole with 40 truckloads of cement and sand. The landscaping work is expected to be finished by Monday.

The Villages resident Giovanni Velocci, whose home is located just across the street from the disaster spot, said that he was taking his morning walk when the sinkhole caught his attention. As he was coming back from his walk, he noticed that the tree was no longer there, but initially thought that someone had “stolen the tree” or cut it down.

The state of Florida has seen its fair share of sinkholes over the years, so much so that it has county by county maps detailing each of their locations.  Florida’s land mass is largely made up limestone, and its northern region consists of layers of sand on top of limestone.

Travel Inside A Sinkhole

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