The City That FLOODED Overnight - Florida's Abandoned Homeless Camp

In the state of Florida, a tragedy struck without warning, leaving behind a place shattered, abandoned, and forgotten. A treacherous night ahead for Florida as darkness begins to fall and Hurricane Ian continues its catastrophic rampage. You can see it across the state in the stunning images of destruction. You can hear it in the desperation of those who made it through. Well, we're seeing some really bad flooding really all over this area near UCF, and I'm going to step aside so you can see it. Just east of Orlando, Florida, in a student-packed suburb called Alifaya, sits a neighborhood that was never supposed to make headlines. But in 2022, it did. This is the place at Alifaya, a sprawling apartment complex right next to the University of Central Florida, one of the largest college campuses in the U.S. It was built for students, designed for late-night cramming and early-morning classes. But all that changed when Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida. As one of the most powerful storms to ever hit the state, Ian brought more than just wind. It brought water. A lot of it. In just a matter of hours, streets turned to rivers, parking lots vanished beneath several feet of water, and apartments, once filled with life, were drowned. The floodwaters rose fast, over four feet high in some units. Students were trapped. Some swam to safety. Others were rescued by airboat. Entire buildings were evacuated. The damage was done. Walls soaked. Mold spreading. Belongings ruined. Many residents never returned. What was once student housing is now a quiet graveyard of memories, decay, and silence. Everything you see here, every first floor is boarded up, their windows, because everything was flooded here. And this caused a huge disaster. It caused court cases and much more. Because the people that lived here, when the hurricane hit, they were really upset and they had nowhere to go. And they claimed that the place here, this place is called The Place, funny enough. And they claimed that they didn't do a good job at telling the people that lived here to leave, to watch out. You know, they didn't give them text messages or warnings. And so they did a lot of lawsuits against this place. And they're still ongoing today. Again, this happened in 2022 on September 28th. From then to now, it's 2025. It's been three years and there's still court cases going on. We're going to be exploring this place. We're going through all the buildings as much as we can. There's a pool. There's a volleyball course. There might even be some sort of cars still left here since then. Apparently their cars were flooded. They ditched everything. I mean, people didn't even have flood insurance, renter's insurance. They lost everything from this. This is a very sad thing. And it's sad to see. We're going to explore and see what we can find. Apparently they could be homeless here. We have to watch out for that, too. We're in Florida. Let's go. This morning, Hurricane Ian, now a category four, pounding the Florida Keys overnight with soaking rains and sustained winds up to 140 miles an hour. There were also a number of reported tornadoes in Florida overnight, knocking down trees and damaging small plains at a local airport. Inland, major flooding in Orlando. You can see the water all the way up tops of cars, first floors of buildings. Multiple parts of the city is underwater. Some residents, of course, still need to be rescued, including 200 people from one nursing home. Cleanup and rebuilding will take months and even years. Look at how deep this water is. This is ridiculous. Inside the first complex building here. This is apartment 95. The sign is still up, which is really cool. But if you walk in, this is what the apartments typically look like. Every apartment is going to look a little different, I'm assuming. And there will be people's belongings probably left. I don't know what we're going to find except that cockroach right there. Jesus. Looks like some guy was trying to clean this place up, though. Hey, look at this. There's a ripped dollar right here. Ripped dollar. I'm going to head on down here in this room. So what is this, like a two-bedroom or one-bedroom apartment? Apparently, there's a lot of homeless here, and they all live in these. I'm not sure if we're going to see any, but when my friends came here, they said they spotted a bunch of them all living in a few of these. So that's the only thing I got to keep an eye on and worry about, just in case if, you know, they want to attack us or whatever. Most of the time, we have good luck and they just leave us alone and we leave them alone. So I'm hoping it's going to be all right. So it's crazy because when this flood happened, again, all of this was underwater. Everything on the first floor that's boarded, it pretty much was all underwater. So about six feet, it goes pretty much up to there. Like here, all the way up to their door. They said some of them couldn't even open their door, and if they opened it, all the water would pour in. And there are so many different buildings and stuff. So we're just kind of trekking through, going through the back, and we're just going to keep going through. And anything that we see open, we're going to go in. You see how some are open, like right there? Those are the ones we're going to keep trying to get into and see what's left. Apparently, and I don't know if they're still here, but people's cars are still here. Like people's legit cars since 2022 from the hurricane are sitting here still somewhere. So I want to see where those are. It's a very sad situation that these people had to go through. Imagine the hurricane happened and you didn't even like realize like, and you're going to be like, oh, I'm just going to stay here. It should be fine. Turns out this flooded multiple times before, and they have a law in Florida that says, we don't have to tell you if there was a flood zone here, or if this is like, this flood can happen a lot more. They don't have to tell you that here. So you're buying this place, you're staying, and then apparently water is just casually going up and up and up to take over the whole door. And at that point, you're trapped. Now you don't know what to do or where you can go. They told everyone to evacuate this place, like hours when they should have already evacuated a while ago, when it was already flooded. Whoa, the glass is smashed on some of them down there. I say this every time, but this is like a zombie apocalypse. So what makes it so crazy? Again, this is Hurricane Ian. Category four on September 28th came and just wrecked this whole place. It's sad. And these people were stranded and they had to try to scram and to take their kids or their belongings, or even the UCF students that were here. They didn't know what they were going to do. It was nuts. Not only are people's cars submerged, I'll tell you all, I spoke to one woman who says her daughter is stuck on the third floor of the complex. People are still in this apartment because like I said, the water is so high that it's almost at the third floor. So this young lady says she is stuck in one of these units with 10 other people who are also frightened. To see like this still like this and no one's repairing it or fixing it up is nuts. Okay, so the whole oven is outside. Let's go check out that one. Let's go upstairs. I kind of wanted to stick together, but I mean hopefully everything's going to be okay. Kids or whoever were throwing a whole bunch of paint buckets on the driveways. The whole thing's kicked in. Hello? I'm just filming if anyone's in here. Just getting pictures. Wow. Look how nice this one is. You see the second floor and a lot of them aren't going to be damaged because the water never got up here. All the wires are gutted out for the copper. Just looking through. Jesus, they cut a hole into the next apartment to get through the other side. Should we check that out? I guess so. Yeah, why not? All right, we'll check it out. So some squatters have been here. Obviously, got the crack pipe right there. For sure, crack pipe. Hello? Holy s***, hang on. That freaks me out. Hang on, I'm going to wait for Trevor and Steve just in case. That could be a hole. I don't know, but those are like the actual owner's beds before homeless took over. So I found like people's bedrooms, but I don't know if there's people here or not. So I just want you to come. What is up, guys? Before we get right back in today's video, we have to give a huge shout out to today's sponsor, Upside. 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This guy had a propane tank or something over there. I just seen it. All right. You know what's crazy too? What I'm filming this video for too is like, imagine the people who used to live here and then they see this video and this might be one of the people's neighbors or houses and they look and see what this turned into. It turned into like, I don't know, a freeloader. Oh, how is that? You scared me, bro. Freaking scared me. But yeah, it's exactly like that. Like I like to show off everything and document things. So this is an ongoing issue that's still going on. This is crazy. You know, hurricane, disaster stuff. I want to record all this, make a story out of this and show you guys firsthand what's going on. This is what's left of this one. It's like, you might've lived here and you're watching. It's like, damn, I can't believe this happened. You know, I bought this place. Didn't know it was a flood zone. And you know, you didn't get flood insurance and this happens and it's very frustrating. It really is. But I went to, I've filmed countless places on my career on the internet, in my career on the internet that has to do with similar things like this. Wow, look at this one. Is that, oh, I thought it was an air mattress for a second. All right, dude, you even got shoes here and everything. Look at that. You even got the tails. Holy crap. People were making a cool camp. Look at how they made their table. I mean, they still have their bike here though, bro. I mean, they might still be here. This might be one that people might still be here. I don't know. Cause I wouldn't throw my bike away. But then again, it is boarded. So it's hard to say. Oh my God, bro. What's back there? Oh my God. Let's look out and see our view. Look at that. Imagine when this was full of life. Hundreds of people all squatted over here. Everyone had to find a new place to live. Look at down there. Some barbecue. But just the back, look at the vegetation. Everything is like a jungle. I'm with Steve Ronan, if you don't know. And I'm with Adventuring with Trevor. He's a local here and he's been showing us around too. So it's been really fun. One tip guys. If you are into exploring like I am. If you don't know where you're going or how large this place is. Take out your map and go to Google Satellite. So you can get an image or an idea of where you are. I have to do that sometimes, especially here. I don't know how far deep this goes down. This place is bigger than I thought. That's for sure. I'm, I love it. I love how it just rained. Giving it that like more cloudy, dark, eerie. I don't know. I watch too many horror movies. So maybe it's just my imagination. You know, just so you guys know. If you do follow the Zodiac, which I don't. But I am a Pisces. And they say Pisces likes to daydream all day. And that's literally what I do. This one is like the other ones. But this one has absolutely nothing. Also people's belongings or whatever that would be in the first floor. Would have been destroyed anyways or gone. Because all of this flooded anyways. Look at this. And you can even see where the water has like kind of risen. This was the line. You can see in the corner. The water at least with this place came up to about here. It was about my knee level. But I guess there was a lot of international students. And some of them were living here because they had to go to UCF. And they stayed at these places because it was cheaper. And some of them because they're not from here. They had no place to go. And at first because you know. They're like oh we can stick it out. Until you know they got warnings. But because they never got warnings by this place to leave or to evacuate or anything. They just stayed and then they were you know. They lost all their belongings and everything got flooded. A lot of things are controversial. Because you can look at it a bunch of different ways. You can look at it like it's your. You got to figure it out for yourself to figure out where to go next. You should know it's on you to leave. And I see both sides. I do. It's like if I'm a student. I'm going to college here. It's like regardless of who you are older or not. You're still you know. You're old enough to know like to leave during a hurricane. It should be on you to figure out where to go. I see that side. But they're fighting and there's a lot of people who are upset here. Is because this has already been a flood zone. It's flooded multiple times. So it's always easier for floodings to happen here. So that was why the whole fight was going on. And why they're in court is because they handled it for the people here so bad. They didn't tell them to leave. They didn't give any text message. They didn't do anything until way later when it was kind of too late. I love that the fridge is just out. Casually. If you guys haven't been to abandoned places. It really is something else though when you're here. Like being alone secluded. Like whether something bad happened or just from old age. It's a feeling that you just can't describe. It's so peaceful. Guys a whole lawnmower here. It was putting work in. Let's check the back of here. Wow it goes all the way down there. We'll have to check down there too. Holy crap guys. I just checked my map. We're only on the first half. Look at all the rest right here. All of this. Haven't even seen yet. We only done like the basic half. That's crazy. So there's way more here. I did not think that. That is some like last of us stuff right there. Tell me not. Wow so some of the stories I'm reading from the locals who lived here are pretty crazy. They said in 30 seconds one of the areas here rose from three feet to five feet. In 30 seconds making them having to leave their SUV. That's probably back there where we gotta go. Because I haven't seen cars yet. Apparently there are still cars here. So we're gonna head to the back and try to get deeper in there. Now there could very well be alligators in that water over there. So let's be careful. I guess we're moving out. We should probably go through here huh to be safe. Too when they built this place they built it next to a river as well. Which also I guess people are complaining that that's stupid and that was bad as well. The woods just in case there are people or security or some weird stuff out here. Just to pop up on the other side right here. Let's just go explore more here. Look how big this gets. Just opening up to the whole area. This might be the biggest abandoned like apartment complex I've ever done. I think I don't know. Is this a pool? Yeah they had a little volleyball area. The fact that this place completely flooded and yet the white sand is still in the volleyball area. It's kind of surprising. Dang this is a huge pool but I mean we're in Florida so it makes sense. So turning now to Hardy County. People there are dealing with devastating flooding that has left some roads impassable and continues that unfortunate power outage. ABC Action News reporter Mary O'Connell found out how people are managing the recovery process. Local officials said measurements of upwards of 18 inches of rain fell causing widespread flooding and raising flood waters on the Peace River to more than 27 feet. Past the record set in 1933 of 25 feet. In Wachula you can see the devastation in plain sight. The line on this home illustrating just how high the water got. On Sunday officials said power outages continue to affect the county with 55 percent of residents still without power. Maybe they serve drinks in here or like this was probably like where you could rent out the room for the day or it was it looked like it wasn't even finished but normally it's like at a community complex area like this you could you know hang out at the pool but then you could rent out this room for families and guests. Let's check down here. So far we have not found like people's cars since the accident either. So yesterday about 200 residents mostly students had to be rescued from the Arden Villas apartments and potentially hundreds of vehicles are damaged or destroyed that were parked in their parking lot because of those floodwaters. There are a lot of UCF students who stay at this complex. You can see this body of water behind me. This is usually pavement where people drive inside of this complex. Just walking up here the water came as high as my boots. My boots are under my pants but it is super high and since we drove in we saw people walking out with their things in trash bags. We saw people holding their animals. They're getting away from their their homes their apartments their things are ruined. I talked to at least three people who said they are just devastated and they had no idea that it would flood this bad. Because now we really get to see how big this place truly was. Now we are at the actual back of this place and I don't see any cars unless they finally pick their cars up. Possible. This side's really bad. All their furniture is like kicked out over here. This could be where the squatters might be though. Well we got Trev going first. He's the biggest. At yo mama house. All right well this shows where the water level was here in the back though. Holy. Yeah look where the water hit. You can see it in this house. It was past the chest right over here. This whole line is where the water was here. This is literally to my neck right here. Look. I don't want to go close to it but pretty much right up to like the neck line. That's how flooded it was here in this house. Super bad. The fact that there's even a bed here and someone was living in the black mold is sad. Look at this over here too. This was a two or three bedroom. Damn I'm getting out of here. Yeah. This is the black mold apartment. All the windows are smashed here in the back. All the furniture is thrown out. And these were like could be students furnitures, family's furnitures. It's not like it was provided when they bought this place. This is personal people's furniture. Well there's another house over here too in the back. One of the last ones I'd say. This building looks like it's just a whole nother like black mold one. Yeah look at that. I'm not even gonna go any further. Nothing like the other ones though huh? This is room 403A. At first we were in the 100s. Wow we just came up to Wagon Road and if you look this little like square neighborhood. How cool it was. I think there's bullet holes in the stop sign. I'm not sure though. It might be. I talked to my friend who been here and he says the cars are somewhere around here. But he went a month ago. So we might be a month late and all the cars that were here are gone. Which is sad. But I wanted to see that and get a picture of that next to this house for a very eerie feeling. I don't think they're here anymore sadly. So I just checked Google Maps and it turns out there's a tennis court right over here. We're now approaching the areas where like we're getting closer to the front and the end. And this is where like we'll see like the mailbox and the administration building. Somewhere like down there. So look at this little dog playground. They call it the bark. It's pretty cool. So overgrown but it's cool that you can kind of make out things. Looks like a real ghost town through there. And here's the tennis courts. And they don't even look bad. Oh this ain't this a basketball courts. I didn't even see that up there. I was looking at the courts because my courts are like blue. So I just seen that. It's a basketball courts. Rain is picking up. I apologize for like any of the splatters you might see in our lenses and everything. It's a trek today. This is a wet explore for sure. This side all the windows have been smashed open. Doors kicked in. Let's go check it out. That door's open. We're gonna go walk in there. And if you look at this one, this one doesn't have that mold as the other one did. Like in the back. It probably only filled up maybe like a foot or two. Compared to back there where the flooding was more closer to the river I'd say. All empty in this one. Approaching the mailboxes. This is probably the main bit of this place I'd say. Wow we were in the back. Look at this. This is a future resident parking right there. That's eerie when you see that. Future resident parking like as if like you know just odd. We saw yesterday along the western coast of Florida to the south of us just an absolutely stunning and heartbreaking scene to see that storm surge and those 140 plus mile an hour winds. The post. With the door like half broken. This was all the mail for the residents here. Looped all the way around to the other side. I love when I see stuff like this. The office. Welcome home. Future resident parking. And then you just look and you see like how destroyed it is and how it's overtaken by nature. Destroyed. In ruins. And then you see welcome home. The office. But this place is looking completely sealed over here though. The office hours are 9 to 6 pm. Closed on Sundays. Open on Saturdays. But oh there is a way in. But what's in it? Anything left? Absolutely nothing. Holy crap. Completely gutted out. There's nothing left. It's gone. And we're going to check down here and that's the last thing left. If we do see a car that's still here since the hurricane. But so far our thoughts are they're gone now. All right. Yep. There are no cars left. Well all right. We did everything. I mean there might be some places that were open or other things that would have been cool. But I mean this place has been gutted out. Any homeless would have stole anything by now out of it for the most part anyways. We covered a lot. Let's just get out of here really quick. So we are outside the place guys. It's right in here. It's very loud here but I want to show you something. This was the way the road to get into the place. This whole crazy busy road. Here was the sign for it. Right there it used to say the place right on it. And you would just go right inside here. There's a security guard right there who's guarding the gate. But right past there would literally bring you to the whole abandoned place we were just at. Right here in Florida. And that's all that's left. That was the bus stop. You can barely see it. There was a bus stop right there. It's all abandoned. It's all gone. Even the sign of the place. And that's all that's left here. Thanks to all my Patreon members who support these videos but especially to Master of Lost Megan and Billy Marshall In Urban Legends Maddie Godbold Melissa Valine Stefano Magadino The First Haunted1821 Jason Voices From Beyond Skylar Gidrey Jessica Hebden Echo Misty Graham and Tim F