Seffner Bob Evans Evacuated, Cracks Found in Walls and Floor

The Bob Evans restaurant in Seffner reportedly will be closed for at least a couple days while engineers seek to determine what caused the cracks in the wall and floor reported to officials Sunday morning, June 9, according to a Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokesperson.

"We're not saying sinkhole right now, there's structural integrity that has been compromised and that's all we know," said the public information official, Nacole Revette, in a Sunday interview shortly before noon. "We're investigating a possible washout of the site because of the elevated a mounts of rain we've had over the past week, and then the tropical storm on top of that."

According to Ravette, employees on schedule to open the restaurant for business Sunday morning found the cracks. "They called managers, they called us and we called [Hillsborough County] code enforcement," Revette said.

There were no customers inside at the time.

On site are the manager for construction for Bob Evans sites and representatives from the engineering company Bob Evans hired to test for "structural integrity," Revette said.

The entire Bob Evans property in Seffner, at 11720 Tampa Gateway Blvd., has been roped off, Revette said. Not closed "is the road that goes all around Bob Evans, which connects to the adjacent hotel, that's been deemed sound," Revette said. "They haven't evacuated the hotel and they're allowing people to drive on the road."

Bob Evans is less than five miles from the three homes condemned and demolished earlier this year on Faithway Drive in Seffner. Jeffrey Bush lost his life Feb. 28 at 240 Faithway Drive, after a catastrophic sinkhole swallowed the room in which he slept.

Fire offiicals were the first on the scene at Bob Evans today, where they found "cracks in the walls and in the floor, about five feet into the entrance," Revette said. "The cracks on the outside walls are also mimicked on the outside of the building. You can see slanting toward that outer wall."

Revette noted that there is a "huge retention pond" to the north of the Bob Evans parking lot, where ground samples were to be drawn. "And because we've had so much rain over the past week, it could be the ground is unstable because of washout," she added.

"Right now there is no active hole," Revette said. "That is what the testing is in reference to."

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