Sinkhole changes shape

A family says the depression is wider, but not as deep as it was on Friday, when it appeared.

By JENNIFER FARRELL

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 7, 2001

SPRING HILL -- On Friday, Ian Kalimanis noticed what looked like a giant well in his back yard.

Four feet wide and 60 to 80 feet deep, the hole opened after a day of heavy rain, appearing about 20 feet from his bedroom window.

At night, he could see light reflected on the water below.

[Times photo: Douglas R. Clifford] Ian Kalimanis inspects the sinkhole behind his Spring Hill home on Monday.

By Monday, though, the sinkhole, which is the second to have opened on the property in the past three weeks and sits near ground zero for sinkhole activity in Hernando County, had shrunk.

At least if you go by depth, as Kalimanis was doing Monday.

"The dirt just caved in on itself," he said. "The dirt just filled in the bottom and just piled up on itself. Now it's not that deep."

Kalimanis thinks more rain over the weekend caused the shift, leaving a hole 8 feet wide and about 20 feet deep.

County spokeswoman Brenda Frazier said Monday that Kalimanis, 20, and his mother, Dolores, will not have to evacuate their home.

In the past month, four homes have been evacuated because of sinkholes, with about 65 confirmed sinkholes throughout the county, primarily in the Spring Hill area.

Frazier said the county gets about a dozen sinkhole reports a day, with one or two of those cases being confirmed. She said county workers have finished filling in holes on public property, but they won't be able to do the same for the Kalimanis family.

"The county cannot go onto private property and do that," she said. "The only work we can actually do is just limited to public property."

Frazier said the county staff is working with Kalimanis' mother, who does not have insurance on the property.

"We're trying to link her with resources to get it fixed," said Frazier.

She said Dolores Kalimanis is the first property owner she knows of who suffered sinkhole damage this year but does not have insurance coverage.

Kalimanis said he doesn't regard the holes in his back yard as a crisis, but he said the county should help shore up the yard, which is near the retention pond where the area's largest sinkhole this year opened last month.

"I don't think there should be giant 20-foot holes in my back yard," he said. "Nobody else has that, unless a swimming pool counts."

-- Staff writer Jennifer Farrell covers Spring Hill and can be reached at 848-1432. Send e-mail to farrell@sptimes.com. Discuss this and other issues in our Web-based discussion forum at http://www.sptimes.com/hernandoforum.

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