FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. — Thursday night the city of Fernandina Beach issued a state of emergency due to the excessive rain over the last two weeks and the stress that rain has put on its stormwater systems. Friday was mostly dry in Fernandina, and that gave the people who live there a chance to prepare for more rain in the forecast.
Many people filled sandbags with the hopes of keeping the water at bay. A steady stream of people went to Central Park in Fernandina Beach to fill sandbags with the hopes of protecting their homes from flood waters.
Even during a morning with no rainfall, water was still bubbling up from the sewer. City crews spent the morning trying to clean out storm drains, but that didn’t seem to help Nigel Ellacott.
“We’ve certainly had flooding during heavy storms but this is about as bad as it gets,” said Ellacott, whose home is surrounded by flood water. However, he said he’s been in touch with the city about this problem in previous years.
“They did install some additional French drains, which helped a little bit, but during the heaviest of storms the drains just get full,” said Ellacott.
Fernandina Beach Mayor Bradley Bean said city crews are doing what they can given the consistent rain.
“People who have worked here in the storm water department have stated they’ve never seen anything like this," said Bean. "This is unheard of levels of rain, that’s what we’re experiencing in Fernandina and that’s what we’re working through.”
The city provided a pile of sand and bags for people like Beverly Mitchell to try and protect their homes. Mitchell said she had four inches of water in her house Thursday night.
“I just called and they said they had sand so I’m here to work and get my sand so I can be prepared,” said Mitchell, “we had to put everything in the upper part of the house.”
Businesses are also affected by the flooding. Donna Ferreira owns Seaside Learning Academy and her preschool will be closed at least through Tuesday and maybe as long as a week after flood waters overflowed into her classrooms.
“We’ll have to do some drywall corrections, I’m hoping the carpets can be cleaned out," said Ferreira. "We’ll have to see what ServePro says, ServePro checks in every 24 hours and gives me an update.”
The weather forecast is the key update for many people in Fernandina Beach. The city went more than 12 hours without rain on Friday but some streets are still flooded because there’s simply nowhere for the water to go.
More than 30 kids attend Seaside Learning Academy and they’ll all have to look for a new place to go while Ferreira spends the next week cleaning up the damage from the flood. She said all of this rain should lead city leaders to re-examine the infrastructure of the city.
“As a barrier island I think we need to be cognizant of the amount of development that’s happening here," said Ferreira. "We had an overwhelm of our storm water system last night. If we get another unprecedented rain like this it’s going to be a problem. I’ve lived in Florida my whole life and I’ve been through a dozen hurricanes, I’ve never experienced rain like this.”
Bean said he’s received lots of calls from people concerned about flooding in their neighborhood.
“We have hot spots on 4th, 11th, 12th, 15th, these streets are a lot of our older neighborhoods that maybe weren’t built with storm drains in mind," said Bean, "We’ve gotten a lot of reports of it and that’s why we’re happy to help with things like this sand and we’ve got our city teams working around the clock pumping out of our most problem areas.”
The city said the excessive amount of rain caused backups with the wastewater collection system but said it’s still operating. The city reminds people not to drive through or wade in flood waters.