Sinkhole opens with a boom

LUTZ -- For more than a month, Kimberly and Alan Whitehill watched and worried over the depression in their back yard. It was an inch deep in April, then knee deep earlier this week.

"We knew something was going to happen," said Kimberly Whitehill, 38.

They found out what at 5 a.m. Thursday.

"You know when you hear the shuttle, the sonic boom?" she said. "That's what it sounded like."

The Whitehills discovered a sinkhole 30-feet wide and nearly as deep. The corner of their back porch dangled over one side. The shed housing their printing business dangled over the other. PVC irrigation pipes, which had laced their back yard, pointed into the watery bottom.

The first load of fill dirt arrived around 4:45 Friday. The dump truck driver peered into the sinkhole.

"Holy s---!" she shouted. "We need help, don't we."

-- Bill Coats, Times Staff Writer