Naples Island boat parade canceled over flooding concerns

Well, residents of Naples Island and Long Beach are upset that their annual holiday boat parade is cancelled over flooding concerns. Long Beach has been one of the hardest hit areas lately with the rising tides and El Nino threat. Fox 11's Ed Laskos joining us now live with more. Ed? And Glenn, you're right about that. It's the latest casualty from all of these storms, the threat of even more flooding and the high tides. Talking about the traditional holiday boat parade called off here now along Naples Island. Mikey, into the story we go. This is a part of the bay here where you usually have those brightly colored boats all decorated, circling Naples Island. That would have been on December 12th, but they decided for safety reasons to call it all off. And think about it, it's a blow to a lot of the businesses, the folks we've been talking to on 2nd Street here. Very busy that night. Brings in usually tens of thousands. And now that. That business is gone, as is the parade. Watch. The party is on here at George's Greek Cafe in the very heart of Belmont Shore with all its restaurants and its shops now all reeling over the loss of the Naples Island Holiday Boat Parade. It's devastating, but it's devastating on so many levels. This is such a great community and when somebody hurts, we all hurt because this is unprecedented. We've never had anything like this and to cancel this boat parade that we've had for so many years. It's the sight, sounds, colors of the traditional holiday boat parade, a long time tradition. It's been around since the mid-1940s. All the brightly colored, decorated boats around Naples Island is now canceled, called off due to safety concerns from the threat of the high tides in December and especially the king tides. That would be the concern for the community coming in. They want to enjoy themselves, but we don't want to hear about any, you know. Oh yeah, it's really scary for Thanksgiving and then coming again for Christmas. Belmont Shores is a great place to be for the holiday season. It makes it difficult. All of this over the growing safety concerns over the deteriorating seawall and the drainage problems along the island and the infrastructure, raising concern for the tens of thousands who usually jam into Belmont Shore and Naples Island for all the excitement. It's almost like the Scrooge that stole everything. Yeah, actually, great point. It's the Scrooge that stole Christmas parade or the boat parade. But we're definitely going to have the Christmas parade down here on 2nd Street. This is that parade on 2nd Street. Floats instead of boats here. Let's see her.