Flooding in Hillsborough County brings out neighbors: NPR

After speaking with members of Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, a man paddles back into a flooded neighborhood in Valrico, Florida. Flooding from a nearby waterway turned some neighborhoods into rivers and forced dozens to evacuate their homes.

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VALRICO, Fla. – As the car pulled up, the few volunteers at Creekside Church of Christ moved quickly in the baking Florida sun, grabbing water, hamburger meat and cookies from the trunk and into the shade of three tents.

They set out snacks and a pot of spaghetti and prepared meat for the grill for their neighbors, who are now using the parking lot as a temporary home.

A volunteer works on the grill in front of Creekside Church. Church members worked together throughout the day to provide food and drink to anyone who needed it.

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Three days earlier, Hurricane Milton hit the town of Valrico, Lithia and other communities on Florida's west coast, bringing damaging winds and widespread power outages.

After the immediate threat from Milton subsided, another emerged: Major flooding on a nearby waterway turned neighborhoods into rivers and forced dozens to evacuate their homes. Some reported that the water was up to their chests and they had to be evacuated by kayak.

That's why, just a mile from a devastating flood scene, members of Creekside gathered Saturday to provide food and drinks to their neighbors like Shauna Thomas, whose homes are still inundated with water.

“We want to help,” church elder Robert Clouse said simply of the effort. “I’m worried about these people now.”

“I don’t think we were prepared for this,” Robert Clouse said of both the destruction of Milton and the subsequent flooding in the city. Although the church has no electricity, it will hold its service this Sunday. Clouse said the service should be “unforgettable.”

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Thomas and some of her neighbors have been sleeping in their cars in the church parking lot since she managed to escape their home earlier this week.

“It came so fast and so hard that none of us could do anything about it. We already knew it was coming, so we got the basics we could get out of it. But it was just too fast,” she said.

She grabbed a suitcase full of clothes and her dog Bailey as floodwaters quickly inundated her Rose Street home.

Thomas' low-lying road is just one of several in Hillsborough County flooded by the Alafia River. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the waterway reached 24.34 feet on Friday, reaching major flood stage.

Other residents NPR spoke to said the area had never flooded so badly before. Hillsborough County emergency responders rescued more than 500 residents and 100 pets after the flood.

Floodwaters inundated several areas of Hillsborough County, including Paul Sanders Park in Brandon, Florida.

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By Saturday afternoon, the water had receded somewhat, but rescue workers and residents were still relying on kayaks and boats to get to the flood areas. NOAA forecasts that flooding from the Alafia River will continue in the severe or moderate flood phase through early next week.

Thomas isn't sure what's left of the house she lived in for two years.

“There is no home,” she said through tears. “The guy who lives behind me lives in a house that's between 9 and 12 feet high, and there was two feet of water in his house. Mine is lower. Mine is only three feet off the ground.”

She thanked the church profusely for providing much-needed resources.

“They brought us food. They brought water. They brought us everything they could,” Thomas said.

She noticed that others in the community had also shown up. One company loaned her a grill to use and another gave her space to park her car on high ground when Milton first met.

“It's a strong community and we'll manage to get through it one way or another. Now it’s just a matter of praying,” she said. “That’s all we can do.”