FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Drivers were urged to use caution when navigating the streets of Fort Lauderdale on Friday after days of unrelenting rain left roads underwater and forced the closure of one of South Florida's largest airports.
A flood warning was expiring, but the National Weather Service warned motorists that water-covered roads could still be a hazard. Meanwhile, officials at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport planned final inspections to assess the readiness of the airfields even as Friday’s forecast called for a few showers and possible storms.
The airport shut down Wednesday evening as a storm dumped more than 2 feet of rain, stranding passengers and resulting in canceled flights.
“Nature has been unkind to us,” Broward County Mayor Lamar Fisher said during a news conference Thursday afternoon at the airport. He, along with airport officials, advised travelers to check with their airlines before heading to the airport.
The water was rising around her car, and Amanda Valentine thought she was going to die. She had just gotten a warning on her phone about flash flooding, and now it was all around her.
“I called my parents like, ‘I’m going to die. Like I’m going to drown. There’s no way for me to get out of this car,’” Valentine said. “And they couldn’t help me. I called 911, and they told me they couldn’t help me.”
She eventually forced the door open and got to safety.
Residents still waded through knee-high water or used canoes and kayaks to navigate the streets Thursday in Fort Lauderdale's Edgewood neighborhood, where window screen installer Dennis Vasquez towed some of his neighbor’s belongings on an inflatable mattress to a car on dry land. He himself lost all of his possessions when water rose chest-high in his house Wednesday night.
“Everything, it’s gone,” he said in Spanish. “But I will replace it.”
In Broward County, where rains started Monday before the heaviest rains arrived Wednesday afternoon, crews worked Thursday to clear drains and fire up pumps to clear standing water.
Broward County schools initially canceled classes Thursday, including after-school and extracurricular activities, after water flooded hallways and classrooms at some schools. Officials announced in the evening that schools would remain closed Friday. Service was restored on South Florida’s high-speed commuter rail, Brightline, after it briefly shut down Wednesday evening.
The Red Cross set up a staging area to help residents whose homes were flooded, providing them with blankets and coffee, officials said.
Fort Lauderdale City Hall remained closed Thursday with ground-floor flooding and no power. A tunnel carrying U.S. Route 1 under a river and a major street in downtown Fort Lauderdale was also closed, along with some ramps to Interstate 95.
Tow truck driver Keith Hickman said he saw abandoned cars “floating like boats” in the streets of Fort Lauderdale.
“There were hundreds of cars up and down here,” he said. “It was unbelievable. I have never seen cars bumper-boating each other and floating. And a truck would come by and the wake would push the cars into the other cars and they were just floating. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
In the Sistrunk neighborhood of Fort Lauderdale, 74-year-old Bobbie Ponder hiked up her dress to push her bicycle the last block to Ray’s Market to get a money order for her internet bill, only find it flooded and closed. Bags of potato chips and Cheetos floated in a foot of water as workers tried to clean up.
Ponder, who lives in a third-floor apartment, said she didn’t think the flooding would be that bad until she tried to ride her bike. She was trying to keep the flooding in perspective, comparing it against tornadoes that recently hit other states, claiming the lives of dozens of people.
“We are blessed — a lot of them died,” she said.
In the Edgewood neighborhood, Christopher Alfonso and Tony Mandico, neighbors for 50 years, said their homes are likely total losses.
“That storm ... just poured down on us for hours and hours and hours,” Alfonso said. Pointing to the tightly packed homes with tiny yards, he said, “All this asphalt, concrete, no grass — there was no place for (the water) to go.”
Both said the area never severely flooded until a sanitary sewer system replaced septic tanks 10 years ago, making some streets higher than others and channeling rain onto lower roads.
Airlines were forced to cancel more than 650 flights at Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, according to FlightAware.com.
Southwest canceled about 50 departures through Friday morning, and the number could grow, a spokesperson said. The airline is letting customers rebook on flights to and from Miami and Palm Beach at no additional charge, she said.
Frontier Airlines moved two flights from Fort Lauderdale to Miami but canceled about 15 other round trips, a spokesperson said. Allegiant Air also canceled some flights and rerouted others to the Tampa, Orlando and Punta Gorda areas.
Broward County Public Schools, the sixth-largest school district in the nation with more than 256,000 students, canceled classes Thursday and Friday after water inundated halls and classrooms in some schools.
The scene as floodwaters rose in the streets on Wednesday was chaotic, with abandoned cars “floating like boats," tow truck driver Keith Hickman said.
“A truck would come by and the wake would push the cars into the other cars, and they were just floating," he said. "I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Shawn Bhatti, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami, said the region received “an unprecedented amount” of rain. The weather service was still confirming totals, but some gauges showed up to 25 inches of rainfall.
“For context, within a six-hour period the amount that fell is about a 1 in 1,000 chance of happening within a given year,” Bhatti said. “So it’s a very historical type of event.”