PASCO COUNTY, Fla. — At the end of Ocean Pine Drive in Land O’ Lakes, there is now a basketball hoop where the road once went through.
That was until July of 2017 when the biggest sinkhole anyone in Pasco County can remember swallowed up two homes.
Seven other houses were condemned.
Andy Fossa was a deputy chief with the Pasco Fire Department at the time.
“It was jaw-dropping for a hole that enormous, and it was still growing,” said Fossa, now Pasco County’s Director of Emergency Management.
When the hole stopped growing, experts decided not to try and fill it up.
But instead, Pasco County bought some of the land and fenced it off.
“Those kind of holes that are that big, you can try and fill. You can fill them. Cover them. Mother Nature is going to do what it wants to do. If it wants to take it back, it’s going to open that hole back up again,” said Fossa.
Experts say eroded limestone on Florida’s west coast causes many depressions and sinkholes.
In 2019, officials reported nearly 80 depressions in Hudson’s Lake Woodlands community.
Some were confirmed as sinkholes.
Another hole opened next to the Varsity Club Sports Bar in New Port Richey in 2021.
Owners fixed the hole, and the restaurant was able to stay open.
And also, in 2021, this bizarre sight in Palm Harbor where two vehicles fell into a hole that opened up in a driveway.
Back in Land O’ Lakes, the county built turnarounds on both sides of the hole a few years ago so larger delivery trucks could get back down the street.
And all has been quiet here in the past few years, except maybe the sound of a basketball.
