Seffner Sinkhole Video: 'In a Flash It Happens and the Whole World's Changed'

Members of the Wicker family gathered under clear skies Tuesday morning, March 5, before the tract of land that once housed the building they called home.

Standing tall in the midst of that lot now covered by fresh, brown dirt stands a stately oak tree, the same tree Leland Buddy Wicker planted with his young and growing family in 1976, two years after they moved to their Seffner neighborhood, nestled between Parsons Avenue and Wheeler and Kingsway roads.

"I remember coming out with my parents, when just the foundation and plumbing pipes were sticking out of" the land," Leland Norman Wicker said. "My parents went out to my aunt, who owns some property out in McIntosh, and they bought [that] tree. I remember planting that tree in the yard when it was probably 3-foot tall."

Over the years, there were "rope swings hooked to it, Easter eggs hid under it," he added, and now "it's just hard to explain" what it feels like to look out at that tree, without seeing the house that stood before it.

"Just picture everything that you have, and everything that you remember about your own life, taken away in a blink of an eye," Norman Wicker said. "That’s the only way to explain it."

What he remembers also are all the good times he had growing up in Seffner and the Greater Brandon community.

"I remember when north Brandon little league used to play their games behind Yates Elementary School," Norman Wicker said. "I remember when the baseball park and the Y were built. I remember when I walked to Seffner school and it snowed and school was closed."

All of these are "just good memories," he said, "with just one sad memory" now to remember.

Norman Wicker gave testament to these thoughts in a Brandon Patch video shot at the scene March 5. In a companion video, his father, Leland Buddy Wicker, and siblings Janell and David, offered their thoughts as well. (See attached videos.)

"Never thought I’d see an empty lot over there," Janell said. "Never thought I’d see my house gone."

"I look at it, and I think about planting that tree," her father said. "That tree was about 10-feet tall when I planted it. That’s been there since ’76 and I never, never suspected nothing like this."

David Wicker agreed.

"It’s like you lost a family member, when you lose the house itself," he said. "I mena, everything that you ever had in it. So it's hard, it's hard to imagine. Four days ago there was a house sitting there, now there’s not. What else can you say."

The Wickers said they were happy they were able to, as David Wicker put it, "get more stuff [out of the house] than we expected to."

But "we'd like to have had Jeff back," he added, in reference to family friend Jeffrey Bush, 36, who died in the sinkhole Feb. 28. "We would rather have had him than any of the pictures we got back. That’s obvious."

"He was a great guy," David Wicker added. "But nothing we got out of that house is worth him not being here anymore."

Leland Buddy Wicker added his two cents as well.

"Like I said before, Jim was the type of guy, he'd give you the shirt off of his back," he said. "And he'd to anything for you. I miss Jeff. We'd talk . . . on the back porch . . . and he'd say, 'Is there anything I can do for you? Can I help you do anything? He was just a fabulous guy."

He was a great guy, he really was," Janell said. "His family loved him, his family cared for him, and he was just an all-around great guy."

Moving forward will require a family effort, David Wicker siad.

"We have a big family and we’re gonna eventually get through it," he said. "It's going to be hard, we're going to help them get through it also. That’s just how we do things. . . we take care of each other."

Leland Buddy Wicker had these final thoughts for the community at large:

"Love your family. Stay together. Keep God as head of the household."

"You don’t ever know from day to day what’s going to happen," David Wicker said. "Nobody expected this. Nobody in a million years would have imagined that something like this would have happened. In a flash it happens and the whole world’s changed."

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BRANDON PATCH SEFFNER SINKHOLE COVERAGE (Through March 6):

• HuffPost Live Looks at Seffner Sinkhole Tragedy: 'Saving Us From Sinkholes'

• Video: Final Walls Come Down on Seffner Sinkhole at 240 Faithway Drive

• 2nd Seffner Sinkhole Under Investigation as Stabilization Work Continues

• Seffner Sinkhole Homeowner: 'God Has a Plan'
  

• Seffner Sinkhole Victim Officially 'Presumed' Deceased

• Readers React to Seffner Sinkhole Tragedy

• Family Treasures Salvaged from Seffner Sinkhole Demolition
  

• Demolition Under Way at Seffner Sinkhole Site

• More Photos From the Seffner Sinkhole Site

• Seffner Sinkhole Operation Readies for Impending Demolition

• 3rd Home 'Compromised' at Seffner Sinkhole Site; Relief Fund Established

• Video: Deputy Douglas Duvall Recounts Seffner Sinkhole Heroics

• Situation 'Extremely Unsafe' at Seffner Sinkhole Site

• Family Member Recalls Horror of Seffner Sinkhole Tragedy

• Photos From the Scene of Sinkhole in Seffner

• Video: Hillsborough Fire Chief Discusses Seffner Sinkhole

• Hillsborough County Among Top 10 Sinkhole-Prone Florida Counties

• Update: Sinkhole Swallows Seffner Man Sleeping in Bed

• Video of Deputy Who Worked To Save Men From Sinkhole 
  

• Video: Man Could Hear His Brother Screaming

• Video: Fire Chief Answers Questions             

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