Living on a Sinkhole

By Peter Bernard, WFLA News

March 11, 2013 Updated Mar 8, 2013 at 8:49 PM PDT

(WFLA) A Florida family's nightmare with a sinkhole started in August of 2011.

As John Furlow worked to clean his pool filter one of his legs dropped into a hole.

"It started out to be about two feet wide and it went down about five feet," Furlow recalls. "And it came out about a foot and a half. And now its approximately eight, nine feet long, and growing."

The large cavern is right under the couple's bedroom.

"Every day, in our bedroom, we lay down and look up and there's more and more cracks. We're just hey look, there's another one" says Tina Furlow.

Around their house there is more evidence of sinking soil. Pavers by their pool are falling, and the pool itself looses an inch of water every day. Hairline cracks can be seen creeping along the stucco and on tiles leading to the front door.

The sinkhole is forcing them to sleep in other rooms.

But not in their bedroom.

"We're basically not sleeping that much into that room. We've took a lot of the furniture out for weight, because we're afraid" said Mr. Furlow.

They say they made a claim with citizen's insurance, which sent an engineer to verify a sinkhole exists, but a year and a half later, nothing has happened.

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