Flooding creates chaos for some in Bartow

BARTOW — Claribel Cruz kept alert for alligators as she trudged through waist-deep water Sunday while fleeing trailer in Peace River Village.

Cruz, 59, was among dozens of residents coping Monday with flooding at the mobile home park, located about 200 yards east of the Peace River bridge at S.R. 60. Four days after Hurricane Ian dumped about six inches of rain in the area, much of the park remained covered by turbid water.

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Cruz, speaking in Spanish as a neighbor interpreted, said flooding from the Peace River had brought water knee deep in her trailer on lot 70.

The water continued to surge west from the Peace River in the days following the hurricane, and by Sunday it had invaded the trailer that has been home for four years to Cruz and her husband, Augustine Arando.

“Her house is destroyed completely,” the neighbor, Rosio Campos, said as Cruz described her situation. “It’s the only thing that she has, so feels like she has lost everything right now. She lost everything — her furniture, the house has gone bad.”

Water had also risen to the chassis level of Cruz’s maroon Ford minivan, and she suspected that the vehicle was ruined as well.

Cruz said she and her husband were living with in-laws in Bartow as they try to figure out what to do next.

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Even as most Polk County residents had recovered electrical service and were returning to normal life on Monday, flooding around the Peace River created misery for some. Residents of the mobile home park, even if their lots had not been flooded, remained without power.

But assistance was also beginning to arrive. A team of at least six FEMA employees stationed themselves at Peace River Village, making assessments of the damage and taking information to register residents for possible federal assistance. One of the FEMA workers said she wasn’t authorized to speak to a reporter about the details of their efforts at the park.

Around noon Monday, two representatives of the American Red Cross of Greater St. Louis arrived in a van. One of them, Tom Murphy, walked up to greet Cruz and Campos.

“Do you need food?” Murphy asked.

“Yes, everything in my fridge has gone bad,” Campos said. “Hers has gone bad as well. We threw everything out yesterday.”

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Murphy and Brett Williams set up inside the van parked on one of the park’s dry streets and began handing out boxes of self-heating meals and cans of water.

“We’re going to be setting up a kitchen around here in the next day or two to have some hot food,” Murphy said. “Right now, we’re handing out boxed food.”

Flooding wasn’t the only indication of damage from Hurricane Ian at Peace River Village. A wooden power pole near the front of the park had been snapped about 10 feet off the ground, leaving a jagged fragment holding a power line that dropped onto the grass.

The top half of the pole lay across the road, a few feet from a parked vehicle, its electricity conductors crumpled. Portable generators could be seen stationed outside a few of the trailers, some of which appeared to be decades old.

Felix Atkinson and his son, Brad Moore, waded down Fourth Street, pulling a canoe loaded with items they have salvaged from Atkinson’s home. That section of the park had become a lake, with water reaching at least the floor level of seven sets of trailers on Fourth Street, which ran roughly north-south. Atkinson, 67, said had lived in Peace River Village for 15 years and never before seen such flooding.

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“Global warming is no joke,” Atkinson said grimly, offering an unprovoked comment on a factor that climate scientists say has intensified hurricanes.

Orange markings spray painted on Fourth Street suggested that the water had begun receding. The water line only reached within about two feet of a line on the pavement dated “10-1,” for Saturday.

While adults worried about damaged homes, lost electricity and spoiled food, children in the park seemed to regard the influx of water as an adventure. A group walking with Campos wading into the inches-deep water at the end of Front Street and splashed around. Emily Bermudez, 4, wore inflatable, yellow floaties around her spindly arms.

Harold and Wilma Hice, residents of Peace River Village for 17 years, sat in their vehicle Monday, wondering when power would be restored to their unit.

“We’re having to stay in a motel right now,” Harold Hice said. “We’re going back and forth to keep an eye on the place.”

Wilma, 65, had a tube under her nose connected to an oxygen concentrator. She requires electricity to charge the battery that powers the device. Harold said it would be impossible to position a generator near their home because it was surrounded by water.

“If it (the water) doesn’t get in, we might be able to salvage it,” Harold Hice said.

He said a security guard who has lived at the park for two decades told him the flooding was nearly as bad as it had been following a trio of hurricanes that passed through Polk County in 2004.

More than one park resident expressed fears of water managers "opening the locks" on structures that feed water into the Peace River.

The Southwest Florida Water Management District began storing about 60% of the inflows into Lake Hancock from three tributaries at the peak of Hurricane Ian, spokesperson Susanna Martinez Tarokh said Monday. The district also closed several structures upstream of Lake Hancock to minimize the flow into the lake, she said.

Water flows out of the south end of Lake Hancock into Saddle Creek, which feeds the Peace River. As of Monday, the district was discharging 450 cubic feet per second from the P-11 water-control structure on Lake Hancock, Martinez Tarokh said.

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At the Peace River Canoe Launch beside the S.R. 60 bridge, two employees from the United States Geological Survey were taking measurements Monday morning. One of them, Jeff Bails, said it appeared water on the Peace River had crested on Sunday at 10.76 feet. As of Monday morning, water was flowing under the bridge at 4,130 cubic feet per second, Bails said.

The flooding had spread farther west than it had been Thursday morning, when a Ledger reporter previously checked the site. Water covered the parking area a few inches deep. A single vehicle, a white truck, was parked in the lot.

Bails said someone had arrived a few minutes earlier, apparently to fish in the water around the overflown river.

Water and stench

About a mile to the south, flooding had spread in the opposite direction, to the west of the Peace River. Water had overtaken Tee Avenue, a short street running parallel to the river about a half-mile away, and had pushed up two perpendicular roads, Booker Street and Washington Street.

Three houses on the east side of Tee Avenue appeared to be inundated, along with a few vehicles parked near them. Water had also reached at least two houses at the east end of Washington Street and one at the end of Booker Street. A mailbox in front of one house on Tee Avenue had water almost up to its platform.

Notations in orange spray paint on the roads indicated the water had withdrawn about a foot from a measurement made Sunday.

Mattie Jones, a resident of Washington Avenue since 1965, gazed at the temporary lake that had formed on the east side of Tee Avenue. She said Bartow’s utilities department had turned off power to her home and others nearby because of the risk posed by the flooding.

Jones said the flooding was the worst she had ever seen, with the water reaching even closer to her house than it had during the three hurricanes of 2004.

Jones said her neighbor to the west, a man who isn’t able to walk, had been carried out of his home by an emergency crew and taken to a shelter. The railing of what appeared to be a ramp thrust out of the water near the house’s front door.

Over on Booker Street, water had reached Richard Reid’s yard but had not risen high enough to enter his home of about 25 years. Reid, 76, said the flooding wasn’t quite as bad as it had been after Hurricane Charley in 2004, pointing to the exterior wall of his house to indicate the previous high mark, one cinder block above Monday’s level.

Reid said he had talked to some of the neighbors who had fled their homes. He said one of the neighbors has flood insurance.

A stench emanated from the water encroaching into Reid’s yard.

“It’s not as horrible as it was the last time,” Reid said, referring to Hurricane Charley.

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A Bartow sewage treatment plant sits about a quarter-mile from Reid’s house, at the east end of Wabash Street. Bartow Mayor Steve Githens said a team from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had gone to the area Sunday to monitor the flooding.

Githens said heavy rains in the weeks before Hurricane Ian’s arrival had already created wet conditions in the area.

“We’ve got to deal with the short-run issues, which are the wastewater treatment plant, which was primary, just wanting to make sure that no water came out of the wastewater treatment plant and went into the environment and that the plant remains functional, and it has over the period of time,” he said Monday morning.

Githens said the treatment plant has a berm built around it, and city crews placed sandbags atop the berm over the weekend for extra flood protection.

The mayor said he had been in contact with the Southwest Florida Water Management District and was told that water from Lake Hancock, which feeds into the Peace River to the north, was flowing over a water-control structure.

“So there wasn't anything they could do at a given point,” Githens said. “They just have to grin and bear it.”

New water hazards

On the north side of Wabash Street, flooding from the Peace River had inundated much of the Bartow Golf Course. The fairways and greens of 10 holes were submerged Monday morning, Manager Tami Waring said, with the water reaching the fairway of Hole 4.

“We have a lot of gators out there as well,” Waring said. “So a lot of people are trying to walk around, and it's kind of dangerous right now.”

Chris Banks, the golf professional, said the flooding compared to what had occurred from the cumulative effect of the three hurricanes in 2004. Employees had counted 32 trees down on the course, Waring said.

“The first time I saw it, it brought tears to my eyes,” Waring said.

Employees had a grill set up behind Mulligan’s Bar and Grill and were cooking hamburgers Monday morning. Waring said the city is providing three meals a day to emergency crews, with the golf course handling lunches.

After electrical linemen from out of the area depart, the golf course will supply three meals a day to about 50 city workers, Waring said.

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on Twitter @garywhite13.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Overflow from Peace River causes flooding in Bartow