Winter Park Sinkhole

The Winter Park sinkhole opened on May 8, 1981, and over the next two days grew to roughly 350 feet across and about 75 feet deep, swallowing a house, half of a municipal swimming pool, parts of the streets beside it, and five Porsches and a camper from a foreign-car repair shop. Photographs of it ran in newspapers around the world. The hole later filled with water and is now a lake called Lake Rose. The collapse had an ordinary cause. Much of Central Florida sits on limestone covered by sand and clay, and groundwater slowly dissolves cavities in the rock. When a spring drought lowered the water table, the support the water provided was lost, and the roof of a cavity gave way. The ground above slid in all at once. No injuries were reported. The damage was estimated in the millions of dollars, and the city eventually stabilized the edges and landscaped the site. That same year Florida began requiring insurers to offer sinkhole coverage. Sinkholes remain common across the state, and they are especially concentrated in the band of counties between Tampa and Orlando. In the weeks after the collapse the hole drew crowds of sightseers from across the state, and vendors sold souvenir T-shirts at its edge.