Rescuers forced to halt bid to reach body of man swallowed by 100ft SINKHOLE amid fears whole house is about to collapse

Jeff Bush, 37, screamed for help as he was sucked into the hole in Florida



Brother: 'I heard him screaming for me but I couldn't do anything'



'Safe to presume' he is dead, say fire officials

House deemed too unstable to continue rescue effort

Sinkhole continues to grow in depth

Water is accumulating beneath the structure



Rescue efforts to retrieve the body of a Florida man sucked into a 100-ft-deep sinkhole that opened beneath his bedroom have stalled on Saturday for fear the entire home will collapse.

Florida authorities described the sinkhole as 'seriously unstable' and said the massive opening will likely continue to grow.



Feared dead: Jeff Bush was sucked into a 100-ft-wide sinkhole that opened under his bedroom

A terrifying scene unfolded at the home in Brandon, near Tampa, on Thursday night when Jeff Bush, 37, was swallowed into the massive opening and trapped beneath the rubble. He is presumed dead.

The sinkhole swallowed part of the interior of the house and though the home's exterior appears to be intact, rescuers fear the ground is unstable.



Tests have revealed a considerable amount of water accumulating beneath the structure, making efforts even more dangerous.



Local engineers were expected to continue carrying out tests on Saturday to determine if rescuers could enter the home.

Bill Bracken, an engineer with Hillsborough County Urban Search and Rescue team told ABC News the house 'should have collapsed by now, so it's amazing that it hasn't.'



The search team expressed their frustration on Friday night as the sinkhole kept increasing in size, starting at 15 ft deep and growing to 100 ft deep, making it too perilous to continue.



Speaking to ABC News , Hillsborough County Officials said it was too unstable to use the equipment needed to try and reach the man.



'Until we know where it's safe to bring the equipment, we really are just handicapped and paralyzed and can't really do a whole lot more than sit and wait,' Hillsborough County Fire Chief Ron Rogers said.



'It's a tough situation; it's even tougher for the family.'



Crews have cautiously been using ground penetrating sonar equipment at the site to map the subsurface throughout the day.

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Hunt: The house still stands and engineers are using sonar technology to find out how deep the hole is

Horror: A man is presumed dead after a sinkhole opened up beneath his house in Brandon, Florida, pictured

Hidden: The sinkhole is only visible from inside the house but could be 100 foot wide under the surface

Workers swarmed the area as Jeremy Bush, 36, recalled how he desperately tried to pull his brother, Jeff, from the rubble as he heard his screams for help.



'We heard a loud crash,' Jeremy told My Fox Tampa Bay as he broke down in tears. 'I ran in there and heard somebody screaming, my brother screaming, and I ran in there.

'And all I see is this big hole. All I see is the top of his bed. I didn't see anything else, so I jumped in the hole and tried getting him out.

"The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn't care. I wanted to save my brother. I could hear him screaming for me, hollering for me. I couldn't do nothing.'

The dresser and the TV set also vanished down the hole, he said.

'All I could see was the cable wire running from the TV going down into the hole. I saw a corner of the bed and a corner of the box spring and the frame of the bed,' he said.

Heartbreak: Jeremy Bush, whose brother Jeff was sucked into a sinkhole, breaks down outside the home



Grief: Jeremy had rushed to his brother's room when he heard his screams but it was too late

Shock: The man recounted how he had tried to save his brother but could only see the bed in the hole

Hillsborough County Fire Rescue officials arrived at the home at 11 p.m. on Thursday and the first officer on the scene rescued Jeremy Bush from the edge of the chasm.

Lt. Donald Morris from Hillbosourgh County Sheriff's Department described the scene officers found.



'The mattress, the bed, everything was actually going down in the hole where the first person had gone and now the second person is in the hole trying to save the first,' he said.

'And they're not being successful so [the rescuer is] just reacting and doing what they have to do to get that person out. It was deep enough that the person he pulled out to safety was not ale to fully extend their arms and even reach the top.'

Hunt: Officials use ground penetrating sonar to map the subsurface around the home to determine the extent of the danger. Crews will take this information and create a plan of action to recover Bush

Recovery effort: Crews deploy a cable controlled robot into a storm drain to look for additional damage

Search: A technician views a live video feed from a robot sent into a storm drain underneath the property Listening devices and cameras were placed in the hole but there had been no contact with the missing man by early Friday. 'We put engineering equipment into the sinkhole and didn't see anything compatible with life,' Fire rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico said. She said that the sinkhole was 30 feet across at the surface, but that engineers have estimated that below the surface it could be as wide as 100 feet and 50 feet deep. 'The entire house is on the sinkhole,' Damico said.

Rescue attempt: His brother heard his screams for help and rushed to his room where he saw the huge hole Mourning: Family members are seen comforting each other outside the Tampa area home on Friday morning



Engineers said they may have to demolish the small, sky-blue house, even though from the outside, there appeared to be nothing wrong with the four-bedroom, concrete-wall structure, built in 1974.



The sinkhole is not visible above ground except from inside the house, and officials believe its center is beneath the bedroom. From the outside, there are no cracks visible.

The Bush home in Brandon is located in Hillsborough County which has been dubbed 'Sinkhole Alley.'



Florida's environmental agency estimates that more than 500 sinkholes have been reported in the area since 1954.

Condemned: The home and other properties nearby have been evacuated in fear the hole could grow Probe: Engineers work in front of a home as they try to determine the size of the sinkhole Search: They believe the sinkhole could be 100ft wide and 50ft deep, but their investigations continue

Search: Officials arrived on the scene at 11.30 p.m. but have so far found no sign that the man is alive

Five adults and a two-year-old child were in the house at the time of the collapse, but no one else was injured.

Janell Wheeler told the Tampa Bay Times she was inside the house when the sinkhole opened.



'It sounded like a car hit my house,' she said, adding that there were screams as one of her nephews rushed to rescue his brother from the debris.



The rest of the family went to a hotel but she stayed behind with her dog and slept in her car.



'I just want my nephew,' she said through tears.

Officials evacuated neighbors living on either side of the home, which they say could be swallowed into the ground at any moment.

The Bush home has been condemned so the family will not be able to retrieve their belongings. To help the family, the Hillsborough County Fire Rescue has established a fund and is asking for donations.



'It's the only one we've seen that opened up in this manner there is no evidence of the structure cracking or anything like that on the outside of the house,' Dexter Barge with Hillsborough County's Code Enforcement told WFLA .

Anthony Randazzo, an expert in sinkholes, said he knows of only two people, who both lived in Florida, who have died because of a sinkhole in 40 years of his studies.

'Usually, you have some time,' Randazzo told USA Today. 'These catastrophic sinkholes give you some warning over the course of hours. This is very unusual and very tragic.'



Bizarre: An aerial view of the home shows no sign of the sinkhole which claimed the man's life