BRADENTON, Fla. — Manatee County is still under a state of emergency after commissioners extended the order originally issued due to Debby. County officials say flood concerns are still high because of heavy rain over the last 48 hours.
Neighbors, trying to recover from Debby, are worried the flooding may not be over. The Lake Manatee dam is at capacity and had to release water again overnight Thursday when the area got more than five inches of rain in about 24 hours.
“The soils are saturated [and] the stormwater ponds in the area are full,” Evan Pilachowski, county's deputy administrator, told commissioners Thursday morning. “The culverts are running at capacity.”
Barbara Ficklin says the rain this August has turned her horse farm into a temporary lake.
“I look at the radar probably six times, eight times a day,” she says. “I am very concerned. I'm concerned for our property, I’m concerned for our animals, and I’m concerned for this area."
Homes along Waterline Road in eastern Manatee County haven't dried out since Debby came through. Ficklin’s neighbor, Jody Craton, dug a huge pond to have a place for the water to go but overnight Thursday, the water still came close to their homes. His wife wonders if they'll be ok for the rest of the week.
“We've been here 22 years,” he says. “I've never heard my wife go, ‘Are we going to be all right?’ Of course, I told her yes. But am I concerned? Absolutely.”
They say development near Lake Manatee has changed how water drains and runs off, turning their homes into the low point where stormwater now sits and stays.
“You got to look at what's changed in this area,” he says. “Hopefully, somebody will put a little more thought into the way the developments go in, and then maybe maintaining the drainage a little better.”
The county is expecting several more inches of rain to possibly fall over the next week. But they stress they are flowing water through the dam now and say it is structurally sound.
“There’s been some flooding along Waterline Road, Dam Road,” Pilachowski said. “That's part of the system just being saturated and overloaded.”
With more rain expected, Ficklin's anxiety will continue as she fears she'll have to move all her animals the next time there's a downpour.
“I don't know that I can, I mean, physically, I don't know that I can go through it again,” she says.