A sinkhole near Disney World crumbles two buildings of the luxurious Summer Bay Resort to pieces, just 10 miles away from the theme park late Sunday-reports say no one was injured but it drove over 4,000 guests to panic.
It was around 11 in the evening when guests in the resort heard cracking noises. One of them complained to a security guard that one of the windows in the villa she was staying in suddenly broke "inexplicably". The next thing they knew, other windows started breaking and security was quick to evacuate the people in the 15-year old condo.
Richard Shanley, the security guard who was on duty at the time says guests were in disbelief, some with kids who were crying as they flee for their lives, grabbing only what they can. One of the guests, Maggie Ghamry shares the horrifying story, " It sounded like a fight - like multiple people with aluminum baseball bats who were swinging them against the windows, and then one window broke. All of us were like deer in headlights. You don't see a building every day twisting around like it was in a vortex and coming down around you, and seeing the room you would have slept in with three toddlers sink 50 feet into the ground and then two floors collapsing on top of them".
One woman who was in a tub saw it levitated and had to run for her life, grabbing only her shorts. Another couple who had an infant baby with them had to smash a window after their room's door frame collapsed.
The sinkhole near Disney World splintered the building into two, causing about 30% of it to completely collapse by 3 AM. Upon arriving at the scene, the resort's president Paul Caldwell says, "My heart sunk. I was sick to my stomach," and continues "No doubt there would've been injuries if they hadn't gotten the building evacuated".
The area of Florida is notorious for having sinkholes. Apart from near Disney World, there have been 4 reported sinkholes between Tampa and Orlando. "Once you start paving those parking lots and roads, putting up houses," he said, "all that water runs off and is collected in ditches and storm drains, and it has to go underground in, basically, a torrent," Randall Orndorff of United States Geological Survey states.
Last February, 36-year old Jeff Bush was swallowed into a sinkhole while asleep in his home in Tampa.
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