Florida is known as the Sunshine State, but living there has a dark side, as the family of Jeff Bush discovered when the 36-year-old man was killed after a sinkhole opened beneath his house last week.
Authorities are now reporting the development of a second sinkhole in Seffner, Fla., just 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the sinkhole that destroyed the Bush home, according to NBC News.
Sinkholes are an increasingly deadly risk in Florida, due primarily to the region's geology, National Geographic reports. The state is largely underlain by porous limestone, which can hold immense amounts of water in underground aquifers.
The water in aquifers exerts pressure on the limestone and helps to stabilize the rock. But when that water disappears, the limestone becomes unstable and is more likely to collapse, similar to the way a dried-out sponge will shrink and flatten.
And Florida's groundwater has been disappearing rapidly as the state's population grows at breakneck speed: By 2015, Florida is expected to hit 20 million residents, making it the third-largest U.S. state, according to BusinessWeek.
To slake a thirsty state's population, Florida has been aggressively pumping out groundwater, destabilizing its limestone bedrock and contributing to the growing number of sinkholes, according to a United States Geological survey report.?
Nowhere is this more true than in "Sinkhole Alley," the rapidly growing region of west-central Florida surrounding Tampa Bay, CNN.com reports. Sinkholes can also occur naturally, but from 2006 to 2010, the number of sinkhole claims to Florida insurance companies tripled, according to BusinessWeek.
Other human activities can contribute to sinkholes, NatGeo reports. When rainwater is diverted by flood channels, it can't recharge depleted aquifers. Agriculture, too, is a big user of groundwater, especially when water is used to prevent winter freezes of important crops like strawberries and citrus, according to the USGS.
These factors, combined with unstable rainfall patterns ? the Tampa Bay region has had less than one-third its usual rainfall this year, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune ? make sinkholes an ever-increasing threat to Floridians.
Email Marc Lallanilla or follow him @MarcLallanilla. Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
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Source: http://www.livescience.com/27659-florida-sinkhole.html
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