On Feb. 28, 2013, 37-year-old Jeffrey Bush was asleep in his bedroom in Seffner, Florida, at 11 pm, while the remaining five members of his family were also turning in for the night. Just then, a massive sinkhole suddenly appeared right beneath his bed and swallowed him and every single thing in his bedroom.
His other family members were unharmed, including his brother, Jeremy Bush, who rushed to his brother the second he heard him screaming and the concrete floor caving. He jumped into the hole, feverishly digging through the rubble to find his brother even as the sinkhole continued getting deeper and the ground kept crumbling around him.
Florida, which sits on limestone and a layer of clay — the recipe for the creation of many sinkholes — gets a lot of sinkholes every year, mostly small, not dangerous, and not causing casualties. But the one that opened over a decade ago under Jeff’s bed was unusually big, so deep and unstable that Jeremy had to be pulled out of the sinkhole, ceasing his frantic attempts to find his brother.
Was Jeffrey Bush ever found? Did he survive the sinkhole?
Sadly, no. Two days after the 19-foot-deep sinkhole appeared, the efforts to find Jeff were ended after hopes of finding him alive or at least, discovering his body, disappeared.
“The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn’t care — I wanted to save my brother,” Jeremy Bush said (via New York Times) “But I just couldn’t do nothing.”
The manpower was then diverted to figuring out how dangerous and deep the cavity was, which then led to the complete demolition of the four-bedroom house, including the house next door. After the whole procedure, the area was fenced off to avoid further accidents. The sinkhole reopened in 2015, then again in 2023, and both times, it filled in with a water-gravel mixture.
The plot doesn’t have the Bush family residence anymore and has been declared a controlled area. But for Jeremy, who lost his brother to that land 11 years ago, it is “the only place I’ve got to visit him” (via AP News).
