Bloomingdale over Buckhorn Creek Repairs & Scour Countermeasures

When a bicyclist fell through a hole in the sidewalk near the Bloomingdale Avenue bridge over Buckhorn Creek in Brandon, Florida, it was obvious there was a problem. The County closed a lane of the roadway and called Ayres to come to the site immediately. Our team found a chunk of sidewalk had fallen straight down into a hole about 6 to 7 feet deep. Looking inside, they found a 20-by-20-foot hole under the approach slab leading up to the bridge.

Bloomingdale Avenue is a main thoroughfare in Brandon, so closing lanes meant disrupting traffic, at least temporarily. Fortunately there was a fast fix for the immediate problem: flowable fill. This is a pumpable concrete mix that can be placed directly into a cavity to be filled. It’s good for filling irregular voids and hardens in a few hours without the need for compaction. The County called out the Ayres team at 11 a.m., and by that afternoon concrete trucks were on the way to fill the hole. Repairs were completed within 24 hours of the Ayres team being called to the site.

It was clear that scour along the wing wall had created the hole. The team discovered that the channel had migrated over the years and eroded the streambank, with the flow now aimed directly at the wing wall. Sand cement bags were placed to temporarily protect the structure while the team designed permanent scour countermeasures.

This project was completed under a task work order-based contract with Hillsborough County to provide miscellaneous structural evaluations and repair designs, as well as other engineering services such as plans and report reviews for bridge designs and bridge hydraulics, preliminary engineering reports, scour evaluations, emergency evaluations, bridge replacement studies, and permitting. Ayres completed more than 50 structural and hydraulic reviews for the County under this contract.

• Jeffrey Siewert, Roadway Leader
• Hisham Sunna, Manager - Structural Engineering - Southeast

• Bridge & Culvert Hydraulics
• Damage Assessment & Emergency Response
• Roadway Bridges & Culverts