Jeff Bush, 36, was in his room sleeping and the other five members of the household were getting ready for bed on Thursday night when they heard a loud crash and Jeff screaming.
Jeff’s brother, 35-year-old Jeremy Bush, jumped into the hole and furiously kept digging to find his brother.
“I feel in my heart he didn’t make it,” Jeremy told Tampa TV station WFTS. “There were six of us in the house; five got out.”
Jeremy himself had to be rescued from the sinkhole by the first responder to the emergency call, Douglas Duvall of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. When Duvall entered Jeff Bush’s bedroom, all he saw was a widening chasm but no sign of Jeff.
“The hole took the entire bedroom,” said Duvall. “You could see the bedframe, the dresser, everything was sinking,” he said.
Norman Wicker, 48, the father of Jeremy’s fiancée who also lived in the house, ran to get a flashlight and shovel.
“It sounded like a car ran into the back of the house,” Wicker said.
Authorities had not detected any signs of life after lowering listening devices and cameras into the hole and rescue efforts were suspended after the site was deemed too unsafe for emergency personnel to enter.
h/t Chicago Tribune
