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Florida Sinkhole Highlights State's Geologic Instability
An anonymous reader writes "Last Thursday night, a sinkhole took the life of a man (TV news video, with ad) while he slept in his home in Seffner FL, near Tampa. While human fatalies are rare, sinkholes are so common in Florida that the insurance industry successfully lobbied the state lawmakers to pass legislation in 2011 making it more difficult for homeowners to claim sinkhole damages. The bedrock in Florida is limestone, a weakly soluble mineral formed from calcified deposits of sea creatures tens of millions of years ago. Above the limestone is a clay layer called the Hawthorn Formation which shields the limestone from ground water; and above the clay is sand. However, the protective clay layer is thin or nonexistent in some areas of Florida, particularly in the middle part of the state near the Gulf coast, where caves and sinkholes are common. Geologists say that human activity, particularly construction and irrigation, can trigger sinkholes by destabilizing the landscape above caverns by drawing down water tables and massing structures above them."
Smart of the insurance industry to make themselves useless. Now, if they never fork out, why should I have an insurance?
Because the bank requires that you pay for insurance as part of the mortgage.
Because the state requires that you pay for insurance to drive legally.
The insurances companies have been tremendously smart. Securing mandates that you pay more and more for their products, acquiring guarantees of profits, all while reducing their liability and payouts.
it was a great idea to start building homes on swamp land?
If the castle sinks, you build another one on top of it. Repeat until it stands. (Then, marry a princess with huge...tracts of land.)
Ezekiel 23:20
Aquifer. I don't think this is connected to groundwater pumping.
It can be the start of a sink hole. Drawing out too much water can make the aquifer collapse. It can create a void where rain water flows into washing away the collapsed parts of the aquifer creating an actual void. With broken water lines they can form in days or weeks this one could have taken years. What's scary is they used to be rare events but they are getting more common so something has changed. Just building housing developments changes the flow of water with unknown effects. Most seem to happen along coastal areas, say 20 or 30 miles of the ocean so drained aquifers and redirected water would be the likely causes. look at it this way, aquifers have been stable for thousands of years then we remove billions of gallons from them in a few decades and don't expect a problem? Think of them as big water beds. What happens to your water bed when the water drains out? Now picture it with porous rock only you stick a hose in and start intermittently flushing water in and out. When there was water in the rock it would buffer the affect of the new water but now it flushes freely through the voids washing parts away. Parts of Florida are a ticking time bomb. Personally I think the bigger problem is brackish water flooding the aquifers. The aquifers are retreating at several feet a year so eventually the fresh water will all be miles inland. All those private wells will be pumping sea water.
it was a great idea to start building homes on swamp land?
This doesn't have anything to do with swampland really, rather it has to with the limestone that makes up the base of Florida. Same with really anywhere there's limestone, Ontario, Michigan, parts of Quebec, large swaths of the NE US. Some places are more stable than others and don't have to worry about it. And there's no much you can do in some cases, and while the limestone is thick where I live several hundred feet there have been huge sink holes.
Om, nomnomnom...