Ellen and Gary Miller had lived in their three-bedroom home in Apopka, Florida for nearly 50 years. They raised their children there, had family dinners, Christmases, Thanksgivings - you name it. if it dealt with family, it happened under that roof.
But on Tuesday September 19th, those memories were swallowed up by mother nature. Ellen and Gary were able to evacuate their long-time home before it was eventually swallowed up by the ground.
Strange sounds, followed by enormous cracks to the walls and foundation were what tipped them off that they needed to get out. Family and friends were able to help the couple remove some of their keepsakes from the home before it was unsafe to be inside, but unfortunately the couple lost their original wedding rings.
"I wasn't sure what all the sounds were until I got up and saw the big, huge cracks in the walls, and they were just enormous," Ellen Miller, 69, told News 6. "It's the only home I've ever had."
At 9:00 a.m. the family, along with their grandchildren were sitting in lawn-chairs as they watched a good portion of their home collapse into the earth. The sinkhole eventually reached a width of roughly 25 feet, and was around 15 feet deep. The Miller's granddaughter, Elena Hale, who took the video of the house collapsing, said "she felt numb watching the destruction", wondering exactly how big the hole would get.
Thankfully, the warning signs were not ignored by Ellen and Gary and they did manage to escape the incident without injury, but the video of the experience is quite mind-blowing. It's scary to imagine what would have happened if they had just stayed put.
Video from: Time Magazine