Three holes opened up within a week in a Holiday neighborhood and geologists say it’s not a coincidence. In fact, the first one could have triggered the other two and more could open up.

“When these things start moving, and whatever causes it to move, it creates a little ripple effect,” said geologist, Sandy Nettles.

Nettles said that ripple affect can travel through the fracture lines or cracks in the limestone.

“These aren’t little tiny cracks, these cracks are usually fairly large and there’s multiples of them, parallel to each other,” Nettles said.

Geologists looking at these sinkholes say the first two intersect at two fracture lines. The third is also on one of those lines.

“When you get that collapse going in you get a little wave if you will, multiple waves going through the aquifer that might have been washing things through and it might have taken a while to get that far down along the fracture line to find one that was lose enough, that was ready to fail,” said Nettles.

Nettles said there was a similar situation 10 to 15 years ago in Safety Harbor.

“We had one house that had sinkhole problems, over the course of three years we wound up with 16, all of them on a perfectly straight line,” Nettles said.

That extensive sinkhole damage is something Holiday neighbors fear could happen.

“The other night she had a little trouble going to sleep because she was thinking about it,” said neighbor, Ken Jett.

“I thought I felt the ground moving one time,” said neighbor JoAnn Jett.

Geologists say the third hole seems to be stable however it has the potential to cause problems.

The challenge now is to find out how to stabilize the ground so that the holes can be filled. Geologists hope to begin work this week. It is only about 500 yards away from the first two.