'NOVA: Sinkholes - Buried Alive'
(DVD / NR / 2015 / PBS)
Overview: In Tampa, Florida, in February 2013, a giant hole opened up under the bedroom floor of Jeffrey Bush, swallowing the 36-year-old as he slept. His body was never found. Bush was a victim of a sinkhole - a growing worldwide hazard that lurks wherever limestone and other water-soluble rocks underpin the soil. Filled with compelling eyewitness video of dramatic collapses and more, NOVA investigates this natural disaster.
DVD Verdict: Directed by Larry Klein and narrated by Jay O. Sanders, 'NOVA: Sinkholes - Buried Alive' explains to us just what sinkholes are and how they can turn an average day (or night) into a horrific, death enhanced experience. It seems, as we're told in great detail, that when carbon dioxide in the air dissolves in rainwater, it forms a weak acid that attacks the soft rocks, riddling them with holes like Swiss cheese.
Indeed, sinkholes can occur gradually when the surface subsides into bowl-shaped depressions or suddenly, when the ground gives way often catastrophically. Sinkholes have swallowed highways, apartment buildings, horses, camels, even golfers, with monster-size holes cracking the earth from Siberia to Louisiana.
What happened in Tampa, Florida, to Jeffrey Rush in February of 2013, when that giant hole opened up under his bedroom floor and swallowed the 36-year-old as he slept, is both amazing and devastingly horrific at the same time. NOVA talks with relatives of Jeffrey, including his brother Jeremy, about that day and what signs or indicators had been possibly overlooked.
Features expert Patrick Courreges, Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, as well as Mike Fasano, former Florida State Senator, 'NOVA: Sinkholes - Buried Alive' also contains compelling eyewitness video of dramatic collapses, and follows scientists as they explore the underlying forces behind these natural disasters.
NOVA travels the globe to investigate what it's like to have your world vanish beneath your feet and will also have you rethinking the foundations of your own home immediately afterwards - of that, you have my word! This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.78:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs.
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