© 2024 Central Florida Public Media. All Rights Reserved.
90.7 FM Orlando • 89.5 FM Ocala
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
🇺🇸 TUNE IN! Our election night special live coverage begins tonight at 7 p.m. 🇺🇸

Volusia reels from flooding after Hurricane Milton

After only just recently finishing up home repairs from Hurricane Ian more than two years ago, a Volusia County family is again grappling with devastating flooding, following Hurricane Milton. "It's catastrophic," Claire Venables said.
Claire Venables
/
Submitted
After only just recently finishing up home repairs from Hurricane Ian, which hit more than two years ago, a Volusia County family is again grappling with devastating flooding after Hurricane Milton. "It's catastrophic," Claire Venables said.

Hurricane Milton moved out of Florida Thursday afternoon, leaving 11 confirmed deaths in its wake, including four in Volusia County, according to the county and sheriff’s office.

RELATED: Four deaths in Volusia County tied to Hurricane Milton

Meanwhile, some residents were left reeling from the county’s latest bout of devastating flooding, including several in the rural area of Tomoka Farms Village, just west of I-95 and southwest of the City of Port Orange. Residents there say flooding in the area is getting worse, due in part to encroaching new development.

Jackie Clark said after only recently finishing up repairs from Hurricane Ian two years ago, her family prepared for Milton as best as they could: plugging up dryer vents and barricading the perimeter with sandbags and floodgates.

“We didn't believe for a second it would happen again, so we didn't evacuate,” Clark said. “We were up all night and all morning, and there was just some ponding in the yard.”

Then, all of a sudden, the water ponding in the pastures rose quickly, within the matter of an hour: up to two to three feet high, Clark said.

“All of a sudden, just like Ian, it's starting to pour through the doors, and it's two to three feet outside,” Clark said. “I crawled out a window because I didn't want to open a door and just let it all flood in, which is what we did in Ian, so I learned something there.”

Ultimately Clark and her family evacuated the home around 5 a.m. Thursday, she said.

Just down the road from Clark, Claire Venables and her family also had to evacuate their home during Milton. They’d only been back in their home for about two months, after repairs from Hurricane Ian two years ago were finally finished, Venables said.

“I finally finished affording to build back my house after Hurricane Ian, and now it's destroyed, to worse levels,” Venables said.

Although initially they were hopeful about weathering the storm, the Venables are now homeless: a family of four, plus three dogs.

“Yesterday going into the storm, I felt confident that we were going to make it unscathed, or relatively unscathed,” Venables said.

But then, around 3:30 a.m.: “We started seeing trickles of water coming in … It felt as though once the water had come in one direction, then it started to come in literally every direction,” Venables said.

"With new buildings, water has got to go somewhere."
Claire Venables, Volusia County resident

Although Venables said she thinks Volusia County did a “wonderful” job preparing residents for the storm and distributing sandbags, she also wishes more could be done to prevent flooding in the first place: including more holistic planning about how new construction built on higher ground could exacerbate flooding conditions in existing communities, like hers.

“With new buildings, water has got to go somewhere,” Venables said. “Unfortunately, my house is lower [than newer buildings] because it's an older home.”

Meanwhile, parts of the St. Johns River were expected to remain flooded for weeks, according to Ashley Evitt with the St. Johns River Water Management District.

"The St. Johns River is so slow-moving, and the elevation level changes so little throughout its length, that it just takes a long time for water levels to regulate sometimes,” Evitt said. “So we're gonna see water levels fluctuate and increase over the next several days, if not weeks.”

Members of the public can use an interactive tool from NOAA’s National Water Prediction Service to monitor water levels along different parts of the St. Johns River.

“I just would encourage residents to keep an eye on that river level forecast, and make any kind of preparations they can, if they're seeing that water level increase,” Evitt said.

As of Thursday afternoon, major flooding was occurring on the river near Astor, on the border of Lake and Volusia counties, as well as the Little Wekiva River near Altamonte Springs; the St. Johns was also flooded to various degrees near Lake Harney, Sanford, DeLand.

A countywide curfew was slated to take effect at 9 p.m. Thursday, lasting until 5 a.m. Friday, in light of flooding and dangerous road conditions caused by the storm, according to Volusia County.

Joe Byrnes contributed reporting for this story.

Molly is an award-winning reporter with a background in video production and investigative journalism, focused on covering environmental issues for Central Florida Public Media.
Marian is a multimedia journalist at Central Florida Public Media working as a reporter and producer for the 'Are We There Yet?' space podcast.
Related Content