[elizabeth52]

Re: Who is King and where does he live......from the article posted in the Orlando Sentinel.

King, who owns a property-appraisal business in Leesburg, noticed the first crack in his 30-year-old home about two years ago.

Now cracks in King's home south of Leesburg near U.S. Highway 27 gape a half-inch and have gone the whole way through the concrete block, tearing drywall and leaving ajar doors and the spots where walls meet ceiling.

King, 76, is not alone, and chances are pretty high that a rising number of homeowners, especially in and near The Villages retirement community, will be in the same situation when summer rains start.

What's going on under that shifty Florida soil? Answer: sinkholes. Big cracks in homes now are often diagnosed as nascent sinkholes, thanks to ground-penetrating radar and other new technology.

That's what happened at King's house. There aren't any actual depressions in the ground where the earth has collapsed on itself, the traditional mental picture of a sinkhole.

Rather, the symptoms are cracks, doors that don't want to open and shut properly and nails that pop out of wood floors.