Following the sinkhole that swallowed a man in Florida, the natural disaster has received more attention in the media and one main reason is continues is due to the fact that a man was swallowed by a sinkhole at a golf course in Illinois on Tuesday and survived.
According to ABCNews.com, Mark Mihal was golfing with friends on Tuesday when an 18-foot deep sinkhole opened up on the 14th hole at Annbriar Golf Club near Waterloo, Ill., sucking him into it in the process. The report said that Mihal was already dealing with a shoulder injury and after he was in the hole, his friends were able to get him out with a rope after 20 minutes.
According to Deadspin.com, Mihal had hit a shot on the hole and when he checked the distance on the shot he walked away from his friend, after which he was sucked into the hole, leaving his friend to wonder where he went. After hearing his calls from the hole, his friend saw that Mihal was 18 feet into the ground in the sinkhole.
"I felt the ground start to collapse and it happened so fast that I couldn't do anything," Mark said later. "I reached for the ground as I was going down and it gave way, too. It seemed like I was falling for a long time. The real scary part was I didn't know when I would hit bottom and what I would land on."
The experience left him feeling worried after a Florida man was sucked into a sinkhole from his home and was never found last week.
"I feel lucky just to come out of it with a shoulder injury, falling that far and not knowing what I was going to hit," Mihal, from the St. Louis suburb of Creve Coeur, told The Associated Press before heading off to learn whether he'll need surgery. "It was absolutely crazy."
While his friend did not see him physically fall into the hole, they quickly found him and called for help.
"It didn't look unstable," he said. "And then I was gone. I was just freefalling. It felt like forever, but it was just a second or two, and I didn't know what I was going to hit. And all I saw was darkness."
Sinkholes are common in both Florida and Illinois and luckily for Mihal he made it out alive.
