Authorities investigating washout that swallowed trucks near Orlando International Airport
ORLANDO, Fla. (FOX 35 ORLANDO) - Engineers spent Wednesday staring into a giant hole that now stretches through about 30 feet of road in a truck parking lot; trying to figure out what went wrong.
Overnight, Orange County sheriff's deputies responded to the lot on Boggy Creek Road near the Orlando International Airport for reports of a possible sinkhole. By daylight, the hole had swallowed at least eight trucks including heavy construction rigs and at least 1 pickup that were all parked in the lot between jobs.
Norberto Rodriguez said the pickup was his as he stood at the entrance of the yard shocked Wednesday morning.
"It's my life, it's my truck, it's my working,” said Rodriguez.
Truck owners in the yard say most of the customers, some estimate a hundred or more of them there, park their work rigs overnight to take out on jobs during the day.
However even those whose trucks were dry Wednesday were getting little work done. That hole completely washed out the road that ran between a pond and a retention area at a next door development. The trucks across that land strip were essentially stuck for the day.
"I mean: your house, car payment, kids, everything is going to be affected after this. This is bad man,” said truck owner Osvaldo Villares. "You got a job to respond to, you got bills to pay, this is, I don't know who's gonna pay for this man."
Leaders at the construction development next door said they were working to get some of those stranded trucks a route through their property and back to work.
Those developers say that retention area, now filled with water, was dry yesterday but that their engineers constructed it correctly. They said they called in crews from the county, state, and their own consultants to investigate the cave-in Wednesday; though they didn’t believe their work was to play.
On the other side, the yard’s owners also had an engineer onsite Wednesday to inspect.
"This area isn't prone to sinkholes,” said Julian Cotos from Excel Engineering.
Cotos said he believes water was essentially flowing in to cracks and gaps underground and eventually eroded away, giving away overnight
How that could have happened or who would hold responsibility was up for debate though. Engineers as well as representatives from the county, the State Environmental Protection Division, and several attorneys and adjusters were all at the site investigating Wednesday.
There’s no indicator at this point how long it will take to pull those trucks out of that estimated 30-foot wide hole. No one was reported injured.