A sinkhole opened up in a residential neighborhood within Walden Lake on Sunday afternoon around 4:30 p.m.
The sinkhole is located in the middle of the street on Carriage Court, measuring roughly 20 by 25 feet wide and 15 feet deep, below public utilities which are not believed to be the cause of the sinkhole, Other segments of the sinkhole have measured deeper. Plant City Streets and Stormwater Department quickly addressed the sinkhole — alongside civil engineering consultant company Madrid CPWG — to assess the current damage and determine the appropriate avenues for repairs.
The initial course of action from the city was to dump 132 cubic yards of sand and dirt into the sinkhole. By Monday morning, all of the previously dumped dirt had been swallowed into the sinkhole and settled into the bottom when the city continued to dump another 72 cubic yards of dirt at around 2:30 p.m. The city has proceeded to conduct ground penetration radar tests on the area to identify locations for geotechnical boring in an ongoing effort to continually monitor and eventually stabilize the sinkhole as they added more dirt on Tuesday. The sand and dirt is repeatedly added in what has thus far been a successful attempt to keep the hole from continuing to expand horizontally.
The sinkhole is believed to be caused by an ongoing dry period throughout central Florida, where water tables have dropped and the result becomes air-filled cavities underground that were previously filled with water. To date, Plant City has received less than one inch of rainfall over the month of April and less than five inches in total since the start of 2023. Once engineers are able to devise an approach to fully stabilize the area, gravel will likely be utilized along with dirt to fill the sinkhole before it is compacted and repaired in full. In the meantime, local residents were assured that the sinkhole is not expected to expand outward and that their homes are not in any present danger.
“It was Sunday afternoon and some family members from out of town came over, they walked in and my nephew said, ‘there’s something going on out front,’” said Richard Galloway, a Plant City resident that lives on Carriage Court. “They had just driven in, we walked out and the road is just collapsing as we were standing there and it was a big hole real fast. I have to say that within a half hour or 45 minutes, city workers started showing up. On a late Sunday afternoon, I was very impressed by how many people were able to get there as quickly as they did and immediately start marking things off and blocking the road.”
In what was ultimately a lucky coincidence, Galloway added that all of Carriage Court’s residents who would immediately be impacted by the sinkhole’s presence — those that live further down the dead end road past the blocked off area of the street — were at home when the incident took place, affording effected residents the opportunity to relocate their cars and park them along S. Golfview Drive.
“All of the neighbors then came out and started moving their cars out past the sinkhole and to the other end of the street because we knew that the road would totally be blocked,” Galloway said. “So everybody started moving cars one by one and neighbors were nice enough to let neighbors drive through their yards to get around the sinkhole. But I’ve been so impressed with the city. They’ve been out there since Sunday afternoon, they’ve been out there at night dumping dirt in that hole, they had seismologists out there checking how wide the thing was and they’re steady out there working right now.”
As repairs continue, Carriage Court has been blocked off to traffic.