LRE Sinkhole Emergency Response Team Services in Demand

The rainy season is known to produce depressions in the ground, and this summer has been no exception in Florida. Tropical Storm Debby dropped, by some estimations, 15-plus inches of water during a seven-day period in late June while moving slowly through Florida.

Debby, as well as heavy rains throughout the months of June, July and August, led to sudden dropouts all over Florida, primarily in the Tampa Bay area.

LRE Foundation Repairs Sinkhole Emergency Response Team (S.E.R.T.) has been utilized by dozens of engineering firms when dropouts appear, but just as many homeowners, if not more, have called on LRE torepair emergency dropouts this rain-filled summer.

Hernando County alone report-edly saw over 60 dropouts due to Tropical Storm Debby. LRE received over 50 phone calls from engineers and residential homeowners in need of emer-gency repairs due to the storm.

They acknowledged that such a high and immediate demand in its S.E.R.T. services was a challenge, but LRE, which has over 130 full-time team members and 20-plus crews, was eager to help.

\"When S.E.R.T. is deployed its usually for an emergency drop-out that occurs during engineer-ing testing,\" said LRE general manager Frank Vitale. \"What LRE was called on to do in the wake of Debby was definitely unusual, but our team accepted the challenge and utilized S.E.R.T. to help dozens of homeowners in need of backfill, underpins or other services. Thats exactly was S.E.R.T. was established for.\"

LREs S.E.R.T. likely will remain in high demand as long as heavy rain continues to fall in Florida.