Third hole in four days opens in Holiday, swallowing a car

HOLIDAY — Pasco Fire Rescue officials were at the scene of a hole that swallowed a car to its bumper Saturday afternoon. It was the third such depression in the past four days in Holiday.

The two holes that opened Tuesday and Wednesday occurred at the Holiday Travel Park. The latest chasm happened about a quarter-mile away, at 4935 Rosedale Lane in the Knollwood Village subdivision.

No evacuations were ordered and no injuries reported.

"It's scary. You don't want to wake up one morning and your parents' home is gone," Milagros Rodriguez said. She and her parents live on the same street as the depression. Pasco officials didn't call it a "sinkhole" but used the term "depression" until the opening can be analyzed by geologists.

"You never know," Pasco County spokesman Doug Tobin said. "It could have been caused by a sprinkler."

The hole, described as 6 feet deep and 10 feet in diameter, formed in the front yard of a home.

Fire rescue personnel arrived to find a car tilted inside the hole up to its bumper. A truck pulled it out.

The incident comes after hydrogeologist Sandy Nettles was called in to examine the Holiday Travel Park sinkholes and declared that conditions were ripe for another depression to form. Before giving way to development, much of the area was wetlands, he said.

However, it remained unclear Saturday what exactly triggered the depressions.

Last week, county workers were busy building a sewer lift station, which involved groundwater pumping. The work has since been halted as a precaution, but officials say it's not clear the work caused the holes.

Tobin said the county has hired a geologist and is awaiting a report on how to proceed with the lift station project.

BayNews 9 contributed to this report. Contact Rich Shopes at rshopes@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3368. Follow @richshopes.