Palm Bay residents rescued from flooded neighborhoods

Welcome to the 407 I'm your host Marlisa Goldsmith. Central Florida barely had time to wrap up Halloween weekend before torrential downpours turned our local streets into rivers. Look at this. Leaving neighborhoods completely underwater. Things were so bad. Brevard County canceled school for the day. With all that rain in such a short amount of time we've seen road closures. Drivers stuck in their cars and emergency crews out there stretched pretty thin. And neighbors. Out to help neighbors. That's my friends, Dan and Robin. Leave it to the Navy SEAL, happening to go out in his kayak when the street floods. How about that? This is from our viewer, George in Melbourne. He took this video on PGA Boulevard, And take a look at this picture. It shows two cars almost fully underwater. Do you see that? The Palm Bay mayor made a desperate plea to ask people to stay home and not try to drive in this mess. Our news crews are out all over central Florida covering the flooding. They're making sure we have the most up-to-date information to keep everyone out there safe. But let's go ahead and begin with meteorologist T.J. Springer. So, T.J., let's get to what everyone wants to know. Are we going to get more rain tonight? Thankfully, Marlisa, we're starting to see a lot of the heavy rain taper off. I think the worst is over for us, but videos that you just saw, pictures like this, an all-too-common scene. Across Central Florida and especially East Central Florida over toward Central and Southern Brevard County. This is US 192 in West Melbourne. You can see cars water up to the wheel wells and beyond some spots seeing water and vehicles completely submerged just about. This is less than ideal, but we always say doing what these cars are doing, driving through the floodwaters. It's not great. Oh, we do actually have a rescue right now. We want to get over to Marie. It looks like they're trying to get hopefully someone to safety. Marie, how are things out where you are in Brevard County? Hey TJ, I am in Palm Bay right now at City Hall and you can see right behind me a rescue crew has just arrived with a man they were able to evacuate from one of the flooded neighborhoods within this city. We were just speaking with the mayor as well as different officials from the fire department. The police chief was here. The fire chief was here. The city manager was here. Everyone is all hands on deck trying to keep the city safe right now. Anyone who they're able to evacuate with these high water vehicle or high water rescue vehicles that you can see right there. They're bringing people to City Hall just as a meeting point. They had about 20 people earlier who were inside. I was just able to speak with several of them. One woman told me that Being rescued this morning was incredible because she truly thought that she might die today, she said, before the police department and fire department were able to go through with boats and get people out of their neighborhoods that are flooded. There are two major spots. One of them is Seminole that is flooded right now. That neighborhood is entirely washed out and a road has collapsed there as well. And the police department is saying that they are just not Not able to get everyone out of there immediately. They're doing their best. They've requested more high-water rescue vehicles to come in. They've asked for two from the state. They have three here already. They've also got boats going out. A couple of them donated. They're asking for more help as quickly as they can get it because they just aren't sure how they're going to get it. Everyone out who needs to be out of the area where they're trapped. They're also checking to make sure if they can get some roads to be passable. Right now, there are so many washed out roads or flooded streets within the city of Palm Bay. The mayor described it as devastation in the city, and he says that they're doing all they can. They're hoping for a little bit of reprieve in the rain, which we have gotten, but there is more expected. And so they're asking people to stay off the roads as best they can, shelter in place, do not not try to drive through. We have seen so many cars disabled in the streets, as TJ was just mentioning, and it is not worth it to even try. We've seen several people attempt to go through and then wind up losing their cars entirely. We also have seen one man try to walk through. That can be dangerous as well. And so the mayor and the sheriff are both saying that if you need help to call and ask for it, you might have to wait a little bit, but it's much safer to do that than to try to risk anything. And then if you need help, they have crews like you can see right behind me who are ready, willing, able to go and provide that assistance. Right now in the city they're also trying to establish whether a nursing home needs to be evacuated. They've moved people to higher floors and hearing people talk about the evacuations that they've gone through today has been really astounding. We had one woman break down crying saying that she had to be carried out of her home by police officers who picked her up and got her onto a boat. We spoke with another 99-year-old man who was evacuated today. He swore he would Never get on a boat of any kind. This was the exception just to save his life. We have more of those stories that we'll bring to you at 5 o'clock. But in the meantime, the message from the city is to just stay off the streets if you can. Still a lot of work to be done. Marie, thank you so much for the updates. Let's take a look at the rush of water coming down the street there in Palm Bay. You can see a few cars are stuck in this. The flooding so bad, the city issued a shelter in place for thousands of people living there. Esther Bowers live at the Palm Bay Fire Department. So Esther, you've heard crews are actively rescuing people. Marlisa, this is really a staging zone where you can see we have Palm Bay police cruisers here. I actually just saw the FWC taking two boats out of Station 7. And as we mentioned, and Marie was saying, they're trying to get more boats mobilized. The FWC is really here helping. But I want you to take a look where we are. Things are not as bad when it comes to the flooding. This is Palm Bay Road. You can see we have folks on the road, actually some families out walking. But I want to just say At the scene for this area right in front of us, Franklin Drive and Palm Bay Road, we've been out here since about 8 in the morning, and this was completely submerged. It looked like a lake. You couldn't see parking lots in any of these small businesses over to this Palm Bay Road. So while I don't want to say this is good news, because we know a lot of folks are still really struggling, I will say water levels are going down in this specific part of town. Really just this eerie feeling because you mentioned that Halloween just wrapped up. It's a ghost town here. We saw very few of any of these small businesses open up because they likely could get no workers to even come to their shops because the conditions were so dangerous. And you're looking at some of those on your screen right now. Palm Bay Fire Rescue has all three of their high water rescue trucks out for emergencies to pull people from flooded cars and homes taking on water. Port Malabar Boulevard has been underwater since early this morning. Bridges over Turkey Creek were washed out and sending raging water over roads and right into neighborhoods. Some drivers tell us they only had minutes before water submerged their car and they were stuck inside with no way out. Over in West Melbourne, people are watching water rise in their subdivisions. They have no way out because streets are submerged and they're not sure if their homes will go under if this rain doesn't stop. All of a sudden, I seen a truck in front of me, he kind of slowed down, and by the time I could even attempt to brake, water just came off of his tires, onto my hood, couldn't see and literally the engine just shut off and I was just stuck. And so that gentleman was actually saved by one of Palm Bay's high water rescue trucks and he was brought here to station seven. Now just some awareness that the fire department wants us to get out there. They've actually had several people showing up here to this firehouse saying my friend is trapped. My neighbor is trapped. We need help getting them out. They want to let the community know do not come to the fire station to let them know about that. You still need to call 911 or the non-emergency line. They are triaging calls and it puts you in additional danger if you get in your car to then come here to let them know that someone needs help. So still be calling in and do not be coming here to the fire station. But on this part of town, specifically Palm Bay Road near Franklin Drive, things are starting to calm down. The rain has definitely slowed down and hopefully we'll start seeing the water levels go down here in this community. Marlisa? Yeah, that would definitely be a huge help. Esther, thanks so much. There was so much rain, it caused pool problems in some neighborhoods. People are funneling water out of their overflowing pools into the streets, even adding more to the chaos. One woman tells us there was too much water to keep up with. Meteorologist Laurel Blanchard is live in Brevard. So, Laurel, what are you seeing at the 4 o'clock hour now? Yeah Marlisa, lots of roads and lots of communities are truly looking like rivers. We are right here at the intersection of Sarno and Wickerham Road and You can just see how deep that water is. But more importantly, the amount of people that are still driving through the water. That is one thing that you should not do just because you really don't know exactly how deep the water is. And we just standing right here, we have seen multiple cars get stopped by this water and just could be completely undriveable. Starting up here along right by the Chili's across the street. There's one car up there. We just saw Porsche get pushed across this river of water in the road and also we're starting to see this minivan that's right across the way across the intersection that is now starting to get towed that is three vehicles just on that side and then on the other side of the intersection we are seeing one and then across the street at the gas station three more vehicles that are completely stopped. Because they tried to drive through that water. So if you do see a flooded road, do not drive through it, turn around and try to find another way. But a lot of communities looked like this earlier on today. And we spoke with one woman in one neighborhood where her streets looked like this and the water Came up so close to her home and the rain just almost flooded her pool that her pool almost overflowed. So she had to take buckets of water and have to dump it out into the streets. Here's what Renee said. Where did you say, like, your pool level was, like, out of curiosity before the rain kind of kicked in? Was it kind of, like, further down here? It was, like, to that bottom part of the line. Okay, so, yeah, just underneath the tile. Like, where I almost had to add water, but I'm glad I didn't. Yeah, and when we were talking to Renee, She said that her pool level rose about six inches of water just from the rain that she saw last night versus the rain that she saw this morning. So that's something that we're going to continue to really work on as we continue to interview people from this community. And take a look behind me. We are seeing road crews. The big thing, especially with intersections, is trying to get that drainage unclogged. We have Brevard County officials trying to get Get those drainage areas clean. Cleared and to hopefully give a little bit of relief within this water. But there are families walking around that are just unable to cross the line. So we're just really hoping that this water will recede. When Marlee Capper was in this area earlier on, she said that the water was rising to about her knees, and we're continuing to see that water linger right around my mid-shin area, and something that's just been absolutely wild throughout this entire thing is that we have been seeing this water slowly start to come back, and I'm not even fully deep yet. I don't want to get too far back. We can still see this water is still over ankle deep on me. And even right here within this flood water is so many people are trying to drive through this water. We have just been seeing car parts get left and are just floating mid intersection. So if you do see streets that look like this one that we're seeing here in Melbourne, do not drive through it. We've seen so many disabled cars earlier on today. So just make sure you're keeping safe. If you do see a road like And avoid the intersection altogether in Melbourne meteorologist Laurel Blanchard. Marley said back to you. Wow and those visuals Laurel behind you just really drive home the message. Thanks so much Laurel.