Before Hurricane Irma, the County Road 218 bridge was maybe a few hundred small steps for a man. But after three months of repair, the bridge’s reopening Friday is one giant leap for mankind in Middleburg.
“This is great!” said a beaming Dwayne Whitaker, moments after being the first civilian to drive across the span since Sept. 19, when divers inspecting the bridge’s pilings found that the hurricane had scoured away creek bed, undermining stability and making the bridge unsafe.
“The big columns that held the bridge up, they had gotten washed out from the bottom when Irma came through, and we had to get those supports stabilized to keep the bridge from total collapse,” County Commissioner Gayward Hendry said.
Engineers spent 50 days giving the six-decade-old bridge new life by reinforcing the four compromised pilings with braces called “crutch bents.” One engineer said the strengthened bridge has a fully new lease on life, estimating that the four vertical cylinders supporting each crutch bent extend into the earth about 65 feet below the bridge deck.
The reopening came 15 days ahead of schedule, bringing a suddenly amplified holiday mood, as driver after driver flashed ‘thumbs-up’ signs to First Coast News near the bridge.
“I live right there on Black Creek Drive and it’s the happiest day of my life in three months, I can tell you that,” Whitaker said.
By the numbers, the 80-day closure eroded the business of life and the life of business in Middleburg. Commissioner Hendry said thousands of vehicles would normally cross the bridge on any given day.
“We’ve been going around. It takes 16 miles to go around, just to get right here where we live, and 16 miles back. So there’s 32 miles that we are saving of round-trip,” Whitaker said of his daily detour.
We stopped in at the Black Creek Cafe, just a short distance away on Blanding Boulevard. Marjorie Robinson was sweeping up just after closing.
[The closure has] slowed us down a lot, a great deal,” Robinson lamented. “I’d say a good probably 70 percent.”
She continued by saying the cafe has missed many of its regulars.
“It’ll be nice to see everybody again. We’re still here!” she said.
In all, the repair cost about $1.5 million. It has no bearing on an already planned replacement scheduled in the next couple years that will expand the number of lanes from two to four. Regardless, after years of counting on the bridge - and nearly three months that felt like years being unable to do so - Dwayne Whitaker said he loves it more than ever before. So nice, he planned to cross it twice.
“I’m going to do a full U-turn, going to go run up here to Winn-Dixie, turn around, and go back through!”