Crews Inspect Florida Bridges for Hurricane Matthew Damage
Several Ayres Associates structural inspection crews fanned out over two Florida DOT districts covering several counties over the weekend in the wake of Hurricane Matthew to check the soundness of bridges and approach roadways. Most of these photos were taken Saturday at bridges over Sawpit Creek and the Nassau River, where Nassau County and Duval County meet just northeast of Jacksonville. Our crews, which also provided services for several Florida counties over the weekend, are busy finalizing reports on what they found. Information accompanying the photos identifies locations and observations.
“Scour dishes,” evident here, are caused by high velocity water flowing around an object, thereby creating vortices that remove sediment around the object. This photo was taken at the fishing piers paralleling SR A1A over Sawpit Creek in Duval County, Florida.
Bank erosion undermined and collapsed one of the approach roadways leading to the fishing pier over the Nassau River in Duval County, Florida.
A leaning pier had been observed during previous inspections at the fishing pier over the Nassau River, where this photo shows bent anchor bolts and reduced bearing area at the steel girder bearings. Ayres Associates inspectors documented this in case any observable changes had occurred since the bridge’s last inspection.
This photo shows the George Crady Bridge, which carries SR A1A over the Nassau River in Duval County, Florida, parallel to the fishing piers.
The approach to the fishing pier over Sawpit Creek suffered bank erosion that left approach guard rails suspended in mid-air.
This bridge over a stream just south of the Nassau River and Sawpit Creek in Duval County, Florida, shows channel scour along the banks. The heaviest scour was measured at the intermediate bents.
This slope protection allowed water to infiltrate and flow underneath the slope protection, where it eroded the native sand layer. Without a stable base, the slope protection failed underneath its own weight and water flow. This type of scour countermeasure is not recommended anymore due to this potential for failure.