Palm Harbor Sinkhole Scare Prompts Evacuation, Rattles Nerves

A normally quiet street in the laid-back community of Ozona was swarmed by TV news crews and helicopters Tuesday morning after word got out that Palm Harbor Fire Rescue (PHFR) crews were responding to a report about a possible sinkhole at a waterfront home there.

As news helicopters circled above the home at 114 Harbor Dr., 88-year-old Elsie Hall and her caregiver, Deborah Wiksten, sat in a car parked across the street. The pair made it out of the home safely with the help of PHFR firefighters. Hall lives by herself in the house. Wiksten was there to help the elderly woman with her morning routine when the house started shaking around 9 a.m.

"I was getting her breakfast ready and getting her out of bed. So, I walked across the floor and I noticed when I walked across the floor that the windows started shuttering and I could hear creaking and it made me very nervous. Very scary," said Wiksten.

"So I told her to stay in the bedroom, and I called 911 to get her out because I did not want to walk across it again."

Wiksten says she had heard about the recent tragedy in neighboring Hillsborough County, where a  She says the first thing she thought was a sinkhole may have formed underneath Hall's home (see accompanying video).

"It was just the weirdest feeling when I stepped on it. It feels like the earth was coming up you know. It was weird and it shook the house, so I was very scared. I just wanted to get her out."

Palm Harbor Fire Rescue evacuated three nearby homes as a precautionary measure. They then went inside Hall's home with a Pinellas County building inspector for an initial assessment.

'No Danger of Imminent Collapse'

PHFR District Chief Dan Zinge said that the floor tiles appear to have become separated from the concrete in a 12-foot-by-20-foot area of the living room at the center of the house. Zinge said initial testing found that there was no indication of any problems underneath the house, but that can't be determined for sure until the home is inspected by a structural engineer.

"There's a raised area in the house that can be caused by a number of different issues, one of which could be a sinkhole. … it's highly unlikely right now, based on the tests we've done with the Pinellas County Building Department that it is not in danger of imminent collapse right now," he said.

Zinge speculated that the cold weather and moisture may have caused the tile and concrete to separate. "When it breaks loose, which is what happened here, it can have explosive results. It was very loud and it's scary," said Zinge.

"She noticed cracks and she started seeing buckles in the floor and there was a raised area of about six inches. That is very scary given the fact what happened just recently in Seffner. She did the right thing," said Zinge, referring to Wiksten's 911 call.

PHFR lifted the evacuation order for nearby homes after assessing Hall's home. PHFR told Hall she could go back into her home, but she is planning on staying at her caregiver's home for now. 

Neighbors Surprised

An hour after Deborah Wiksten made the 911 call, people who live nearby had made their way to Harbor Drive to see what was going on. 

Gloria and George Rice, who've lived in the neighborhood for 18 years, saw all the news helicopters hovering nearby. They grabbed their dog Maggie and hopped in the their golf cart to check out the situation. "I don't think we've ever had a sinkhole around here," said George Rice.

"I was surprised when I heard there was a possible sinkhole on our block," said Barb Owens, who walked over with her daughter Kelsey and the family dog, Yogi, a 9-year-old St. Bernard.

Steve Tucker lives just a few houses down from Elisie Hall. His son is in Ft. Lauderdale and had called him after hearing news reports about a possible sinkhole on his father's street in Palm Harbor. "I don't see anything," Tucker said motioning over to Elsie Hall's house.

"I certainly don't want this to develop like in Seffner."

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