SARASOTA, Fla. — The torrential downpour from Tuesday evening made it harder for neighbors to get around and businesses to operate.
Several shops and restaurants had to shut down in St. Armand's Circle after being inundated with nearly three feet of water.
The flood waters had receded by Wednesday morning and several barricaded roads were reopened. The sun was out to help dry things up for many business owners who have had to deal with a similar severe flash flood in less than a year.
"The back got flooded. The front got flooded. I wasn't able to get out of my car because if I did, I would get stuck," Celeen Castro, a cashier at Green Zebra Café, said.
Several of those business owners in both downtown Sarasota and St. Armands Circle spent the day cleaning up after the flood.
Between 5 to 10 inches of rain was dumped on Sarasota within a three-hour span.
"As cars are driving by, there's nowhere for the excess water to go into so it just starts coming up here and going up into the stores and we had sandbags but they didn't do a lot," Castro said.
"We had people trying to come in and get their friends and their family whoever was over here because if they got stuck, they weren't able to because the road is blocked. They didn't want anybody to come in because you know they weren't going to be able to get out," she added.
"We had about 3 feet of water on the sidewalk, so right now I'm just moving everything out of the shell and dirt," Alex Rogowski, a gallery owner, said. "I had to install these thresholds but there is a little bit of gap underneath, just about half an inch, enough for water and debris to get into the gallery. So moving forward we are going to have to come up with a better way to seal it."
Sarasota police and county first responders had to rescue 34 people stranded in their vehicles and towed 40 disabled vehicles between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
"A lot of people either didn't know that that was coming in that amount or they were already in transit and it was too late to turn around," Cynthia McLaughlin, a Sarasota Police Department spokesperson, said.
"Yesterday can serve as a lesson that if you don't see the ground, if the water looks like it's pretty deep, don't try it please also don't go around barricades or blocking streets," McLaughlin said.
"There were many cars on the roadside this morning that needed to be towed away because drivers didn't heed the advice to turn around before they were not able to," Spencer Anderson from Sarasota County Public Works said.
A sidewalk near Phillipi River collapsed from the force of runoff water trying to get into it. The county's public works crews spent the day removing the displaced concrete slabs and securing the area. A water main pipe was exposed but officials said it fortunately was not compromised.
"It does show us where the weak spots are. It was a unique event and for it to occur as early in storm season as it did, it does help us know where we need to tweak some things in the future," Anderson added.
Officials said they anticipate more flooding if the area experiences more rain in the coming days and have asked that everyone prepare, not just for thunderstorms but for the active hurricane season.
"Luckily, we do have an upstairs gallery, so we have an elevator and I just loaded the art from the bottom floor and took it upstairs. But it looks like I'll have to save myself some work to deal with some more flooding here shortly," Rogowski said.
After a similar flooding event was caused by the last hurricane, the county invested around $1 million to rehabilitate the pumps on St. Armands.
They said those pumps did what they were supposed to do but a combination of high tide, the topography of the island and all that rain was just overwhelming for the system.