A sleeping Florida man was sucked into the earth and is presumed dead after a massive sinkhole swallowed his bedroom.
Jeffrey Bush, 26, hasn’t been heard from since Thursday night, when he vanished into a 20-foot-deep, 30-foot-wide abyss that opened beneath his family’s Tampa-area ranch home, authorities said.
“There is no sign of life,” said Hillsborough County fire chief Ron Rogers.
Bush’s family members were in the house when the ground gave way.
“I heard a loud crash, like a car coming through the house,” his brother Jeremy told local WFTS-TV.
“I heard my brother screaming . . . I tried to go inside his room [but] all I seen was this hole, a real big hole, and all I saw was his mattress.”
The distraught sibling jumped into the hole in a bid to save his brother, but had to be pulled out himself by rescuers.
“I was trying to dig him out, but I couldn’t find him,” Jeremy said. “I thought I could hear him hollering for me.
“I told my father-in-law to grab a shovel so I could start digging and I just started digging and digging and the cops showed up and pulled me out of the hole.”
“I know in my heart he’s dead,” he said.
Jeremy Bush was one of five people, including a 2-year-old child, to make it out of the house to safety.
Engineers called to the scene yesterday said the ground under the home — which looked eerily intact from street level — continued to give way. Surrounding homes were evacuated.
Sinkholes are caused when ground water eats away the bedrock, eventually causing empty pockets that cause the topsoil to cave in on itself.