FORT LAUDERDALE – The Florida Office of Transportation tells CBS4 that it was pressured to shut down the Henry E. Kinney Tunnel in Fort Lauderdale at 7 a.m. on Tuesday after two days of major flooding.
A spokesman advised CBS4’s Peter D’Oench that FDOT mobilized pumps to get rid of the drinking water from the tunnel that runs beneath Los Olas Boulevard, but FDOT identified hurt to one particular of its long lasting pumps.
The spokesman mentioned FDOT was operating to fix the damage to the pump as immediately as attainable and take out all the h2o.
The town of Fort Lauderdale tweeted that the tunnel was closed “because of to large h2o until even further detect. We are experiencing flooding in some space of the town because of to King Tides exacerbated by this weekend’s rainfall.”
The closing of the tunnel brought site visitors to a standstill both north of the tunnel and north of Broward Boulevard and south of the tunnel at S.E. 7th St. as law enforcement redirected autos to alternate routes.
Kaushal Karia, the proprietor of Primo Liquors and Good Wine claimed, “They have go to do what they have go to but this has experienced a destructive impact on our overall procuring heart. I stay on the other side of the tunnel and it ordinarily will take me 5 minutes to get to operate. Nowadays, it took me 25 minutes. I think about that some shoppers wanting to make purchases would go in other places. My small business is off at least 25 p.c.”
The past time the tunnel was shut was in July as section of a $28 million enhancement undertaking.
“Every single time they shut this tunnel as you can see it just pushes targeted visitors absent from our intersection,” he explained.
A travel about Fort Lauderdale displays some flood waters remaining in the Rio Vista neighborhood, not far from the Kinney Tunnel
Nancy Gassman, Ph. D., the Assistant General public Works Director, explained, “Right away we bought 2 to 3 inches of rainfall in the city of Fort Lauderdale. That rain fell as higher tide was coming up. We are currently enduring higher tides involving 8 and 14 inches higher than predicted. So when we have that amount of rainfall on best of a hide tide there is just no way for drinking water to get out. You have to hold out for the water degree to occur down in purchase for the roadways to dry out and the drinking water to be in a position to discharge.”
She explained, “We are unquestionably coming to the end of the moist year. To have that volume of rainfall in November is unconventional. The predicted King Tide for Thanksgiving weekend is predicted to continue on till Monday of up coming week and will be our very last predicted King Tide of the year.”
The tunnel reopened Tuesday evening at 5:30 p.m. immediately after it was shut down for just about 10 1/2 hours.
