7 Pasco Homes Now Condemned Due To Sinkhole

WUSF | By The Associated Press,

Published August 7, 2017 at 8:08 AM EDT

In this image taken from a YouTube video, the first house swallowed by a Pasco County sinkhole July 14 cracks apart.

Florida officials have condemned three more homes due to a Florida sinkhole, bringing the total to seven homes that are now unlivable.

Authorities in Pasco County, a suburban area north of Tampa, said in a news release Monday that another home was being condemned.

That follows the condemnation of two additional homes on Sunday and two more on Saturday. Two homes were destroyed when the ground in Land O' Lakes originally caved in on July 14.

A map showing, through processed drone imagery, the extent of the Pasco County sinkhole as seen on July 19. Red dots mark the first two homes lost to the sinkhole, the yellow squares are the four homes condemned in the last few days by Pasco County officials.

The sinkhole is now about 260 feet (79 meters) wide at its widest point.

Crews brought in earth to stabilize the banks, and are taking a two-prong method to handling the destruction.

"We are attacking it with a barge in the middle of the sinkhole, moving around collecting debris, and working on bank stabilization with the long-reach excavators from the side - that tactic is being successful," said Kevin Guthrie, Pasco County's assistant administrator for public safety.

Researchers from the University of South Florida Library's Digital Heritage and Humanities Collections and School of Geosciences returned to the scene on Friday.

Collections co-director Lori Collins said they performed new 3-D scans of the entire sinkhole area to help Pasco officials understand the developments. They also performed some testing on the soil and are planning to return Monday to fly drones over the sinkhole to help map it out one more time.