For today’s ongoing updates on Hurricane Milton, go here.
But for significantly less traffic on most roads, you’d be hard-pressed to see that the largest part of Flagler County under an evacuation order was heeding the warning this morning.
From the looks of the Barrier Island and the mainland part of Flagler Beach in the first hours after the 8 a.m. evacuation order, there were many more cars parked in driveways than getting packed or driving off. Homes with sandbags or other storm preparations were the exception. Businesses were more likely to be boarded up than homes, though that was the exception even for businesses, most of which were closed.
In storms past, residents adorned their preparations with special messages to the coming storm–messages somewhere between humorous, resilient and defiantly obscene, their words shaped like middle fingers. Not this time. It’s as if the weariness of hurricane season with three Florida landfalls, and possibly more to come, had taken its toll.
A few neighbors were spotted speaking Milton to each other. But the most flood-prone areas of Flagler Beach, from Lambert Avenue to Palm Drive to South Flagler Avenue, looked as if they were lolling through the low-energy, nearly deserted morning of a soggy Sunday rather than using the last available hours to prepare for what may be one of the most destructive hurricanes in decades on the Gulf Coast, with significant local impacts by the time it begins to reaches this side of the Peninsula after midnight tonight. Either residents had already left (vehicles in driveways suggested otherwise) or they had begun to hunker down.
“Business is slower, but there’s a lot of people staying. I’m not hearing of a lot of evacuations,” Flagler Beach Commissioner Eric Cooley, who owns the 7-Eleven two blocks south of the Flagler Beach pier, said this morning. The store often resembles a town square, with a steady stream of customers in and out, many of them using the store as a place to take a break, have a few conversations, chat it up with the owner. Customers were few today. Cooley had screwed in the aluminum covers to all the ocean-fronting glass panes and prepared the five propane-powered generators that will keep the store’s perishable merchandize cool or iced in case of power cuts.
He looked worn from preparations, but he was disappointed by the lack of a broader response to evacuate, and worries that the influx of new residents since Hurricane Irma in 2017 means that a lot of people think they can ride it out without issues.
“It’s a little disheartening, the lack of preparation,” Cooley said. “I drove through the city last night. There’s a lot of sandbags, but in a storm like this, sandbags aren’t going to stop the water.” He added: “There’s a surprising amount of people staying. I’m hoping the ones staying are the ones with experience.
A lot of the homeowners who’d been flooded in 2017 sold and left, “but a lot of new people moved in and they don’t know what to expect,” Cooley said. “All those houses that were a really good deal–that’s how they sold.”
Flagler County Emergency Director Jonathan Lord said Hurricane Milton’s local impacts will be similar to those of Hurricanes Ian, Irma and Nicole: “If you saw flooding in Irma, Ian or Nicole, you are likely to see flooding with this storm in our community,” he said on Tuesday. He repeated the caution today, even as the storm track has edged south slightly. Rain amounts and storm surge are still expected to combine for a hazardous 48 hours even after the storm passes, as waters swell the Intracoastal well after the storm surge: that’s where it gets troublesome for residents along Palm Drive, Lambert Avenue and South Flagler Avenue, where the Intracoastal goes from beautiful view and placid companion to sinister and unstoppable intruder.
One difference with Milton in Flagler: the barrier island’s businesses have for the most part closed, and started closing Tuesday, which has limited the influx of people to the island, and of gawkers to the boardwalk. In storms past, Cooley said, the boardwalk, across the street from 7-Eleven, often looked like a Disney attraction, which was not helpful.
Cooley and other volunteers from Flagler Strong, the non-profit organization, are getting ready to be the rescuers of first resort if and when the waters rise. In parts of Palm Drive, which rises barely a few inches above the adjacent Intracoastal, water was already pooling several inches deep–as in many parts of Palm Coast, for that matter, where swales are overflowing into streets and yards, though that’s what they’re designed to do in heavy rain events.
Tuesday evening, Ken Bryan, a resident of Palm Drive and a former city commissioner, sent out a video illustrating the difficulties on Palm Drive, where residents were emptying swales by hand, and complaining of city inaction, though city officials are nearly powerless.
“This is Palm Drive. The water doesn’t flow properly so it floods people’s homes, and the city doesn’t have a work schedule today with anyone that can help out, according to our commissioners,” Bryan says as he walks along an overflowing swale. “Even got their own pumps going to try to pump the place out to avoid getting flooded. Absolutely ridiculous. One commissioner’s response? ‘Well, it hasn’t been raining.’”
Residents have been calling and emailing Cooley as a commissioner, asking what will the city do when their house floods. “The answer is: you’re in a flood zone,” Cooley said. “There’s nothing the city can do. As a city, you’re not going to stop this hundred-year rain, you’re not going to stop the Intracoastal.”
What the city has done is line up Crowder Gulf, the disaster recovery and debris management company, on standby so it’s ready to tackle debris removal as soon as practicable after the storm passes. The caveat is if homes are flooded. Then, the city will have to give homeownes time to do what they did after Irma: line streets with ruined furniture and possessions in dispiritingly high piles.
Meanwhile Hurricane Milton’s outer bands were already dumping voluminous amounts of rain on Palm Coast, the barrier island and the rest of the county, 24 hours ahead of what may be significantly worse bursts of precipitation on the north end of the storm.
