Melbourne deals with historic flooding

And welcome back. We're now at 8:47. Melbourne is still a mess this morning after yesterday's historic flooding. A precautionary boil water notice is in effect because of a water main break there and people have been rescued from flooded homes and drivers have had to abandon their cars. Take a look at the scene. Their school is closed again today and some polling places are shut down, forcing voters to go to other polling places to vote. So let's talk to Sean. joining from the Melbourne Police Department this morning. He's a commander in the community. Services Division. Good morning. It is good to see you this morning. Good morning. Thank you for having me. What a horrific thing here. This flooding is extraordinary. Something that is rarely seen as we've been saying all morning long. What goes through your mind when you look at the aftermath of this flooding? Well, I think looking through the city, it is horrific as to some areas that have gotten hit. Obviously, we're going to be dealing with this for days, weeks, and even probably months to come for some people. Homes have been damaged. A lot of vehicles have been damaged. There's going to be a lot of recovery that's going to have to take place in the area over the next few months and time period. However, I will say, getting up this morning, once the light came up, we were able to get our officers out to start evaluating the roads, the intersections, and some of the areas that were damaged. Heavily flooded yesterday have receded quite a bit. There are a number of areas that are completely capable of being driven through now. There are still a few areas that I would caution people to drive through and just pay attention. If we have barricades up, please, please pay attention to those. We've had some instances where people have moved those barricades and people weren't alerted to the dangers and vehicles actually flooded because of just People trying to navigate around things that we've put in place to try to prevent those things from happening. And here's the thing, and you said it, you know, when you have people who are moving those barricades and barriers to get around, not realizing how deep that water is, we know that some roadways are still flooded, conditions are still dangerous. We know that schools are closed again today. What should people know, though, if they have to get out, right, and they have to travel today? Well... Pay attention to our website, to our social media, both all of the city organizations, the city of Melbourne, West Melbourne, Palm Bay. Everybody's trying to update their social media and their outlets as well as they can. Pay attention to what roadways we're cautioning you about. I know there were a lot of changes in the voting venues. Thank you. We've moved a lot. I know West Melbourne moved most of their voting to a Shadow Christian Center here in the city of Melbourne. And one thing I would caution about people trying to exercise that right to vote, I would recommend I-95 or Wickham Road. John Road between 192 and O'Galley still has some issues, and you could find yourself in some difficult situations on that roadway. So just pay attention to the social media, our websites. Try to keep, you know, before you do travel, make a game plan. But be patient. Be flexible. This is definitely not a time to lose your patience and try to push the limits of your vehicle in some areas where it's just not worth it. And very quickly, we do have to wrap here, but I want to ask about where people can call, right, to find out what resources are available. Is there a place they can go? Is there a number they can call? Well, for resources, 2-1-1 is always available. Online searches for resources are available. You can call into the police department if you have questions about whether or not your area is safe and whether or not your home is in danger in any way. However, I would caution, yesterday we had almost triple our call load than normal, Just trying to field these types of issues Issues with individuals with flooding and with situations like the FIT rescue that many people are seeing on social media where FWC had to come in and help us with rescuing some people that had gotten into a fast-moving river area. So just I would reach out to the Internet and try to I mean, try not to use our phones as much as possible. But there are a lot of resources available online that you can you can address that way. And we've already seen and heard some heartbreaking stories. And I know you guys are doing the very best you can under these conditions. Sean Ising, we appreciate you joining us this morning. Thank you so much. You're welcome.