Global Courant 2023-04-14 20:11:43
South Florida has begun clearing the aftermath of a storm that brought 2 feet of rain in just a few hours on Thursday. The odds of this amount of rain falling within 6 hours are 1 in 1,000, said a National Weather Service meteorologist. city and even forced a major Fort Lauderdale airport to cancel more than 650 flights on Thursday
The water rose around her car and Amanda Valentine thought she was going to die. She had just gotten a flash flood warning on her phone, and now it was all around her.
“I called my parents like, ‘I’m going to die. Like I’m going to drown. There’s no way for me to get out of this car,'” Valentine said. “And they couldn’t help me. I called 911 and they told me they couldn’t help me.”
She eventually forced the door and managed to get to safety.
WARM WEATHER RISES WILD FIRE, POSSIBLE RECORD HIGH FOR MILLIONS
Parts of South Florida began clearing on Thursday after the unprecedented storm that trapped Valentine and other motorists dumped more than two feet of rain in a matter of hours, causing widespread flooding, closing a major airport and draining arterial roads into rivers. changed. There were no immediate reports of injuries or deaths.
Residents were still wading through knee-deep water on Thursday or using canoes and kayaks to navigate the streets in Fort Lauderdale’s Edgewood neighborhood, where window installer Dennis Vasquez hauled some of his neighbor’s belongings on an inflatable mattress to a car on dry land. He himself lost all his possessions when the water rose to chest height in his house on Wednesday evening.
“Everything, it’s gone,” he said in Spanish. “But I’ll replace it.”
In Broward County, where rain began Monday before the heaviest rains arrived Wednesday afternoon, crews worked Thursday to empty sewers and fire up pumps to clear standing water.
Fort Lauderdale declared a state of emergency as flooding continued in parts of the city. Crews worked through the night to attend rescue calls. Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport, which closed Wednesday night, said it would not reopen until 5 a.m. Friday due to debris and flooding.
People wade through the water to rescue valuables in a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, neighborhood on April 13, 2023, after an unprecedented storm swept the area within hours. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)
By early Thursday, enough water had drained to allow people to drive up the top floor — or departure road — to pick up waiting passengers. But access to the lower road, or arrival road, remained closed.
Airlines were forced to cancel or change flights to and from the airport. Southwest canceled about 50 departures through Friday morning, and the number could grow, a spokeswoman said. The airline will let customers rebook flights to and from Miami and Palm Beach at no additional cost, she said.
Frontier Airlines moved two flights from Fort Lauderdale to Miami but canceled about 15 other round trips, a spokeswoman said. Allegiant Air has also canceled some flights and diverted others to the Tampa, Orlando and Punta Gorda areas.
More than 650 flights were canceled at Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, according to FlightAware.
Schools in Broward County initially canceled classes Thursday, including after-school and extracurricular activities, after hallways and classrooms at some schools were flooded. Officials announced in the evening that schools will remain closed on Friday. Service on Brightline, South Florida’s high-speed rail service, has been restored after it was briefly shut down Wednesday evening.
The Red Cross has set up a rally to help residents of flooded homes by supplying them with blankets and coffee, officials said.
FLOODING IN FORT LAUDERDALE FORCES AIRPORT CLOSING, LEAVES DRIVERS BEACHED FOR HOURS
Fort Lauderdale City Hall remained closed Thursday due to ground level flooding and no power. A tunnel carrying U.S. Route 1 under a river and a main street in downtown Fort Lauderdale were also closed, along with some ramps to Interstate 95.
Tow truck driver Keith Hickman said he saw abandoned cars floating “like boats” on the streets of Fort Lauderdale.
“There were hundreds of cars going up and down here,” he said. “It was unbelievable. I’ve never seen cars crash into each other and drift. And a truck came up and the wake pushed the cars into the other cars and they were just drifting. I’ve never seen anything like it .”
In the Sistrunk neighborhood of Fort Lauderdale, 74-year-old Bobbie Ponder pulled up her dress to push her bike the last block to Ray’s Market to get a money order for her internet bill, only to find it flooded and closed. Bags of chips and Cheetos floated in a foot of water as workers tried to clean up.
Ponder, who lives in a third-floor apartment, said she didn’t think the flooding would be that bad until she tried riding her bike. She tried to put the floods into perspective, comparing them to tornadoes that recently hit other states and killed dozens of people.
“We’re blessed — a lot of them died,” she said.
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In the Edgewood neighborhood, Christopher Alfonso and Tony Mandico, neighbors for 50 years, said their homes are likely a total loss.
“That storm… has been crashing down on us for hours and hours and hours,” Alfonso said. He pointed to the tightly packed houses with small yards and said, “All this asphalt, concrete, no grass – there was no place for (the water) to go.”
Both said the area was never seriously flooded until 10 years ago a sewage system replaced the septic tanks, raising some streets above others and diverting rain to lower roads.
Shawn Bhatti, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami, said the region has received “an unprecedented amount” of rain. The weather service still confirmed the totals, but some gauges dropped up to 25 inches of rain.
“For context, within a six-hour period, the number that fell is about a 1 in 1,000 chance of happening within any given year,” Bhatti said. “So it’s a very historic type of event.”
