Forgotten burriel ground found beneath Florida School.

A forgotten cemetery has been found beneath the grounds of a school in Tampa Bay, Florida. An investigation with ground-penetrating radar was carried out at the King High School campus after the Hillsborough County School District was informed by local historians Ray Reed and Rodney Kite-Powell of the Tampa Bay History Center of the likely presence of the site. A total of 145 graves were found by the survey, which are thought to have been part of the former Ridgewood Cemetery, a site used primarily by poor African Americans between 1942 and 1959, before being sold to developers.

Ground-penetrating radar scan of the King High School campus site. The red line marks the estimated boundary of the former Ridgewood Cemetery, the purple boxes are individual graves. Hilsborough County School District.

The site is the third cemetery uncovered by Reed and Kite-Powell's research. The fist site, on the grounds of the Water Street Tampa project, a new development featuring retail units, offices, homes, and hotels, was found in September 2018, and is believed to be the former Fort Brooke Estuary Cemetery, used in the 1930s. The second site was revealed in June this year, when the about 800 graves from what is thought to be the Zion Cemetery, possibly the first African American cemetery in Tampa.

Local historian Rodney Kite-Powell believes more forgotten cemeteries are likely to be uncovered in the Tampa Bay area. Dirk Shadd/Tampa Bay Times.

Ground-penetrating radar is a technique that uses pulses of micro-wave radiation to look for reflective (or partially reflective) objects beneath the surface. At its simplest, this technique can be used to look for large artificial features, such as buried pipelines, but it can also be used to look for structures such as graves, which cut through multiple layers in the earth, all of which will have different reflective properties.

See also...

Follow Scieny Thoughts on Facebook.

Homes evacuated after sinkhole appears in Seffner, Florida.

Two homes in the town of Seffner in Hillsborough County, Florida, have been evacuated after a sinkhole appeared between them on Friday 30 October 2015. The hole measures 6.7 m across and is estimated to be 8 m deep. Nobody was injured in the incident, and the homes have been evacuated purely as a precaution while the hole is investigated.

Sinkhole which appeared between two homes in Seffner, Florida on 30 October 2015. WFTS.

Sinkholes are generally caused by water eroding soft limestone or unconsolidated deposits from beneath, causing a hole that works its way upwards and eventually opening spectacularly at the surface. Where there are unconsolidated deposits at the surface they can infill from the sides, apparently swallowing objects at the surface, including people, without trace.

The approximate location of the 30 October 2015 Seffner sinkhole. Google Maps.

Southwest Florida is particularly prone to sinkholes, due to the porous limestone that underlies much of the area. This is eroded over time by acid in rainwater (most rainwater is slightly acidic, though pollution can make this worse), and can collapse suddenly, causing overlying sediments to collapse into the hole and a sinkhole to open up. This can be triggered by human activity, such as pumping water out (which causes the water to flow, facilitating acid dissolution of the limestone), but is essentially a natural process. 

See also...

Homes destroyed by Florida sinkhole.

Two homes have been destroyed and a further four evacuated after a sinkhole opened up in Dunedin in Pinellas County, Florida on Thursday 14 November 2013. The hole first appeared early in the morning...

Florida holiday villa collapses into sinkhole.

A three story holiday villa at a resort in Lake County, Florida, has partially collapsed into a sinkhole described as between 12 and 15 meters wide. The 24 unit building at the Summer Bay Resort in Clermont, roughly 16 km to the west of Disney World, was evacuated at about 11.30 pm local time on Sunday 11 August...

Florida man swallowed by sinkhole in home.

Around 11.00 pm local time on Thursday 27 February 2013, the family of Florida man Jeff Bush heard a loud crash followed by screaming from his bedroom, in Faithway Drive, Seffner near Tampa. His brother, Jeremy, rushed into the room to find the a...

Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.