Article Courtesy of The Tampa Tribune
By Keith Morelli
Published October 10, 2011
TAMPA -- It's been 15 months since a 25-foot wide, 40-foot deep sinkhole collapsed at the front door of a Bordeaux Village condominium building.
|
A fence surrounds a building at Bordeaux Village, where a sinkhole opened up 15 months ago |
the University of South Florida's east side. But that was before July 11, 2010.
That's when those families became refugees of Mother Nature, getting the boot from their homes for safety reasons. Now victims of a smothering bureaucracy rather than the collapsing earth, the residents never came back.
Now, they're out because of a legal squabble between the homeowner's association and its insurance company that covers sinkhole damage.
Among the displaced are Sean and Sandy Burnham who had just moved in a month before the ground opened up. It was their Toyota Camry that was swallowed by the hole. The car remains buried there, along with some personal items the Burnhams had not even unpacked.
After the hole opened, Bordeaux Village allowed the Burnhams out of their lease.
"The building had been condemned," Sandy Burnham said, "and they didn't know how long it would take to stabilize."
Their plight over the lost car was answered by an anonymous donation of a 2001 Volvo, she said, a car the Burnhams still drive. Both currently are out of work, looking for jobs and living in Carrollwood.
She said a recent rainstorm caused a small sinkhole in a neighborhood street, causing them to think craters were following them around.
"The road just started sinking," she said.
Marielle Westerman is an attorney who represents the Bordeaux Village Homeowners Association. She's filed a lawsuit against the insurance company last year and in April the suit was settled.
The issue centered on stabilizing the ground beneath the building and who should foot the bill for it. The hole at Bordeaux Village had been filled with tons of rocks and sand.
The insurer argued that was sufficient to fix the problem, but Westerman countered that more must be done to make the building safe for the residents. She said the insurance company had refused to perform more tests even though association-hired engineers said more comprehensive, costly tests were needed.
The association could have done the testing itself, but it was too expensive, Westerman said, and that was something the insurance company was required to perform and pay for.
Vanguard Management, which oversees the property, posted on its website in April that the case had been settled, and that the court had ordered the insurance company to pay for sinkhole tests and that structural repairs were in the works.
By August, bids were being taken for geological engineering work, the website said.
Still, the building next to the sinkhole remains off limits to residents. Whether the building will be torn down or rebuilt is uncertain.
Meanwhile, some former residents had to pay for temporary lodging along with mortgages for their condominiums, which they were prohibited from living in.
Many gave up and were foreclosed upon, Westerman said.
