LAKELAND — Elizabeth Vega could not suppress tears Saturday morning as she stopped in her walk along Willow Wisp Drive North and gazed at the houses of two neighbors.
“What a tragedy,” Vega murmured in a voice clotted with emotion.
The adjacent houses in North Lakeland each bore orange decals on their fronts that declared: “UNSAFE. DO NOT OCCUPY. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.” Yellow caution tape stretched across both driveways.
A chasm gaped below parts of both houses, leaving sections undermined and partly collapsed. Neighbors said the hole formed overnight Wednesday, during the relentless rains of Hurricane Milton.
A hole nearly encircled a large oak tree in front of the house at 3627 Willow Wisp Drive North, causing a crack to form at the base between its two trunks. Blue canvas straps had been attached to hold the trunks together. A child’s swing hung from a branch.
Between the houses, a vintage, yellow pickup truck sat at the bottom of the small crater, a wooden fence and a cluster of crape myrtles leaning across it. A trampoline lay toppled in the hole.
The front section of the westernmost house overhung the vanished earth by a few feet. Next door, the ground had collapsed beneath part of a garage, which crumpled downward, the corner of its roof nearly at ground level. A column bearing a stone facade had tumbled toward the hole, which held chunks of the partly collapsed driveway.
Loose cinder blocks hung loosely at the front wall of the house behind the garage.
The residents of the houses were not around Saturday morning.
Neighbor: A surreal sight
Kevin Randolph, who lives directly across the street from the house at 3619 Willow Wisp Drive North, still seemed shaken Saturday morning by the apocalyptic sight. He said he first realized what had happened at about 5 a.m. Thursday, after the worst of Hurricane Milton had passed.
“We walked out front door, and that’s the first thing we see,” Randolph said.
His reaction?
“Devastating. Surreal.”
Randolph, who has lived in his home for 19 years, said that Polk County workers have come out to assess the houses. The cause of the collapse still has not been determined, he said.
Asked whether he is concerned the chasm could spread, Randolph said, “Definitely, especially if it’s a sinkhole. They said if it’s washout, they might be able to repair it. If it’s a sinkhole, we don’t know how wide it will spread or how deep it went. So there is concern we may have to move. We’re just waiting for the surveyors, or whoever they have, to come out and take look at it.”
County property records show that both of the damaged houses were built in 1983. Each is a one-story structure of about 2,100 square feet.
Gloria Lawson, who lives next door to the easternmost house, said that she has heard and seen further settling since the house first collapsed during the storm.
“You can still see how the house keeps coming down,” she said. “It wasn’t that bad.”
Lawson, who has occupied her home since 1993, said that the small neighborhood flooded after the hurricane, and some water entered the rear part of her house.
Resident complained about drainage
Peering toward the house next door, Lawson said she suspects the collapse is related to what she called ongoing drainage problems. She pointed to a drainage grate set into the ground at the boundary between her home and the one next door.
“My husband had reported this to the county,” she said. “He told the county when it first started with that sewage right there. He told them that he seen how the ground was sinking, and they came out and guess what they put?”
County workers installed a small caution barricade with an orange reflective light on top, she said. On Saturday, the barricade stood in front of the house next door, helping to hold the yellow caution tape in place.
Lawson said it has been about three years since her husband notified the county of the softening ground around the drainage grate.
“Yeah, it worries me, because we never had anything this devastating,” Lawson said.
More: Floodwaters invade homes, cover roads in Northwest Polk
‘Something you never expect’
The nearest house was occupied by a man who had lived there less than a year, Lawson said, and she didn’t even know his name. A young family with two boys, one an infant, has lived in the other house since 2017.
“I talked to them that (Thursday) morning,” Lawson said. “He said he got out of there 11 or 12 o’clock that night when he seen how the trampoline went down. He got his family all out of there.”
Randolph said he was storing some items in his garage for the family. He said he had spoken to the father, a man named Josh.
“He puts on a strong face, but his wife, she’s real emotional,” Randolph said. “It’s something you never expect. You’re still in shock. But he’s had a lot of support since this happened, people coming over and helping him move things out.”
Randolph said he was less familiar with the man who has lived alone in the other house for about six months. He said the man had recently renovated the house, inside and out.
“No one came over to check on him,” Randolph said. “Nobody came to help him move stuff out.”
The man is staying in a hotel and was forced to rent a car because his own vehicle was in the garage when it began collapsing, he said.
“He said he’s hanging in there,” Randolph said.
Fallen wires still blocked the entrance to the small neighborhood from Kathleen Road on Saturday morning. But residents were able to depart through a second entrance on Duff Road.
Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Crater spawned by Milton threatens two houses in North Lakeland
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