Falmouth home partially swallowed by sinkhole to be demolished

A Falmouth, N.S., home that partially collapsed into a sinkhole early Sunday morning will have to be demolished, and it's not yet clear if insurance will cover the freak incident.

The first floor of the house fell between six and nine metres into the ground.

"The structural engineer determined ... that it continues to move and obviously has to come down," said homeowner Chris Strickey.

"It's not structurally safe. Sooner rather than later is their want and their advice."

More info on Tuesday

Strickey said their insurance policy covers "collapses," but the family hasn't been given any guarantees and they expect more information Tuesday, after the holiday.

"Hundreds of thousands of Nova Scotians diligently pay house insurance monthly and annually for this sort of situation," he said.

Heather Strickey and her 16-year-old daughter, Julia, were inside the home when the sinkhole first developed.

Heather said she woke up at 3:07 a.m. after hearing noises downstairs, which she thought was a burglar. She pondered calling 911 and after about five minutes, she made the call.

'I think there's someone downstairs'

While on the phone with a dispatcher, Julia came into the room and said, "Mom, I think there's someone downstairs."

They tried to close the door to the bedroom, but, oddly, it wouldn't close.

The two went into the master bathroom, and then into an attached closet. Heather grabbed a nail file as a weapon, while Julia took a mirror.

"We could hear the noises," said Heather. "We could hear what sounded like TVs being taken off the walls, things shuffling, being pulled. At first I thought, 'OK, they don't know we're in the house. They think this is an empty home.'

"Then the power suddenly went off, and there was a huge crash of glass. And we thought, 'Oh no, they've figured out we're here. They're panicking."

Heather and Julia stood shoulder to shoulder, ready to defend themselves.

All the while, Heather was on the phone with the dispatcher, quietly questioning how soon the police would arrive.

'You need to get out fast'

As soon as officers did arrive — about 25 minutes after Heather first called 911, she says — the dispatcher told her the shocking news.

"The dispatcher says, not an invasion, it's actually a sinkhole. And we're like, 'What?' He said, 'Grab a few things in your arms. You need to get out fast."

Julia said as she made her way out, what she was seeing "didn't make sense."

"I looked to my left and I could see my dining room floor was on a slant, almost like a slide," Julia said.

They got outside and looked back.

"And then we watched our house start to sink into the hole," said Heather.

They were allowed back in, briefly, to grab a couple of things.

"I just took a backpack and I started throwing random stuff in there," said Julia. "I was supposed to work at McDonald's at eight the next day, so I grabbed my work uniform."

Firefighters, too, went in to salvage a few items such as family photos and documents from the end of the house farthest from the sinkhole.

Heather's husband, Chris, was in Halifax with the couple's 13-year-old daughter when the sinkhole opened. He said it's possible that an excavator may be brought in with a claw-type device that can pick up and rescue some smaller items, but that hasn't been confirmed yet.