‘There is no home:’ Floridians find helping hands after floods

Jaclyn Diaz | October 13, 2024

After speaking with members of Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, a man paddles back into a flooded neighborhood in Valrico, Fla. Flooding from a nearby waterway turned some neighborhoods into rivers, forcing dozens to evacuate their homes. (Ryan Kellman | NPR)

VALRICO, Florida — As the car pulled up, the few volunteers of Creekside Church of Christ moved quickly in the burning Florida sun, pulling water, hamburger meat and cookies out of the trunk and into the shade of three tents.

They laid out snacks, a pot of spaghetti and prepped the meat for their grill for their neighbors now using the parking lot as a temporary home.

A volunteer works the grill in front of Creekside Church. Members of the church worked together throughout the day to provide food and drinks for anyone who might need it. (Ryan Kellman | NPR)

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

After the immediate threat of Milton subsided, another emerged: Major flooding from a nearby waterway turned neighborhoods into rivers, forcing dozens to evacuate their homes. Some reported water reaching up to their chest and needing to evacuate by kayak.

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

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

“I don’t think we were prepared for this,” Robert Clouse said of both Milton’s destruction and the subsequent flooding in town. Despite not having power, the church will hold its service this Sunday. Clouse said the service should be “memorable.” (Ryan Kellman | NPR)

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

“It came in so fast and so hard that there was nothing that any of us could do. We already knew it was coming, so we got the basics that we could out. But it was just too fast,” she said.

She grabbed a suitcase of clothes and her dog, Bailey, as flood waters quickly took over her Rose Street home.

Thomas’ low-lying street is just one of several in Hillsborough County flooded by the Alafia River. The waterway crested at 24.34 feet on Friday — reaching a major flood stage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Other residents NPR spoke to said the area has never flooded this bad before. Hillsborough County emergency crews rescued more than 500 residents and 100 pets in the flooding aftermath.

Flood waters inundated several areas of Hillsborough County, including Paul Sanders Park in Brandon, Fla. (Ryan Kellman | NPR)

By Saturday afternoon, some water had receded, but emergency crews and residents still relied on kayaks and boats just to enter the flood zones. NOAA forecasts flooding from the Alafia River to continue in the major or moderate flood stage through early next week.

Thomas is not confident about what remains of her house she’s lived in for two years.

“There’s no home,” she said, tearing up. “The guy that lives behind me lives in a house that’s between nine and 12 feet high, and he had two feet of water in his house. Mine’s lower than that. Mine only sits three feet above ground.”

She gave effusive thanks to the church for providing much-needed resources.

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

She found that others in the community have shown up, too. One business loaned her a grill to use and another gave her space to park her car on higher ground when Milton first hit.

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