Beginning on August 13, 2013 at around 10:30 p.m. with windows cracking, a significant portion of a three-story resort villa, about five miles from Disney World in Orlando, finally collapsed at 3 a.m. this morning as a 60-foot wide crater developed. Residents evacuated safely, albeit with some escaping through windows rather than doors. Florida has four types of sinkhole risk regions with the greatest number of the scariest type, quick forming, cover-collapse sinkholes occurring in the central region of the state. It is here where clay sediments of 30 to 200 feet thick overlay the limestone.
When holes in the the limestone form, the clay sediment forms a bridge over those holes that can remain in tact for some time before dramatically collapsing and forming a sinkhole. Cover-collapse sinkholes are less common along most of the southwestern part of the Panhandle where sediment cover can be more than 200 feet thick. But in this same region when sinkholes do form, they can become very large and deep. To illustrate the widespread occurrence of sinkholes having formed in the U.S. and overseas, search on Google for SINKHOLES, if the above link ceases to work.
Original URL: http://news.discovery.com/earth/sinkhole-opens-near-disney-world-resort-130812.htm
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