Hurricane Idalia: Flooding along Gulf Coast causes fires, road closures, destroyed homes

HUDSON BEACH — Hurricane Idalia may have come ashore at Keaton Beach, but its impact could be felt as much as 150 miles south in record flood waters.

In Citrus County, U.S. 19 resembled an impromptu lake, forcing local emergency officials to close off the primary access to downtown Crystal River.

Across coastal Pasco County, fire-rescue officials estimated that floodwaters entered up to 5,000 homes, triggering an array of dangerous rescue operations for residents who rode out the storm.

“We had a lot of people that were in their homes. We had people that were getting up on their roofs. We had people that were hiding out in their attics,” Pasco County Fire Rescue Deputy Chief Jeremy Sidlauskas said. "We had all kinds of stuff that we encountered today."

For example, he said Pasco firefighters responded to at least two burning homes amid the floodwaters.

“We had multiple structure fires this morning that were very difficult to contain because of the high water," Sidlauskas said. "In at least one case, we took a floating fire pump in a boat – and our firefighters went in on foot.”

By mid-afternoon Wednesday, Sidlauskas said no injuries had been reported in Pasco County beyond a single-car fatal accident on Interstate 75. First-responders entered flooded neighborhoods, such as Hudson Beach, using jon boats, high-clearance vehicles, brush trucks, tanker trucks, airboats and other vehicles.

“It certainly could have been worse," Sidlauskas said. "But this is pretty devastating for the homes and the people in our community."

Similar battles with encroaching floodwaters were happening up and down the Gulf Coast from Tampa Bay to Florida's Big bend region, as tens of thousands of residents awakened to the result of Hurricane Idalia's fury. It is the most intense storm in a century to strike the Big Bend, on the stretch of Gulf Coast where the Panhandle meets the peninsula. As Idalia made landfall as a Category 3 storm near Keaton Beach Wednesday morning, it knocked out power to more than a quarter-million customers in Florida. It remained a Category 1 hurricane even as it continued its trek into the late afternoon across south Georgia.

In Hillsborough County, 65-year-old retiree Pam Marshall stood on her back porch Wednesday morning, marveling at the brackish floodwaters that had turned her backyard into a pond. Marshall, who has lived on Park Drive in the Hillsborough community of Riverview for more than a decade, said she’d never experienced anything like it.

“We weren’t expecting this,” Marshall said. “We’ve lived here since 2010 and there’s been nothing.”

Trail of destruction: See Hurricane Idalia's path of destruction throughout Florida's Gulf Coast, panhandle

Indeed. Hurricane Ian, which devastated Fort Myers Beach around this same time a year ago, largely spared her home in a canal-lined neighborhood about 10 miles southeast of Tampa.

But not this year. Not Hurricane Idalia. This cluster of houses near the bridge where U.S. 301 crosses the Alafia River suffered record flooding as Idalia lumbered by on its way to a Wednesday morning landfall further north. The river smashed its previous record high water level set during Hurricane Frances in 2004, according to National Weather Service data.

Marshall said neighboring homes had flooded during previous storms, but hers stands at a higher elevation and had always stayed safe.

Idalia's wind-fueled waters tore up the hardwood flooring in her house; the air inside smelled faintly of gas and septic runoff. But Marshall said she, in one important way, was lucky. Just three months earlier, she bought flood insurance so she could qualify for a state storm hardening grant – an increasingly difficult proposition, as rates spike and insurers flee the Florida market.

“We just made it,” she said.

Power restoration: Hurricane Idalia's impact on Florida: Thousands without power, storm surge, severe damage

Meanwhile in Pasco, Hudson High School senior McKenna Colwell and three friends were wading through hazardous floodwaters Wednesday afternoon trying to reach Colwell's mother’s home in low-lying, hurricane-socked Hudson Beach to see if she was all right.

But Colwell said they were forced to turn around as the water level in the streets near Old Dixie Highway was approaching chest-deep.

“Terrified. Crying. I’ve been crying. And I haven’t heard nothing from her,” Colwell said, shaking her head and walking away from the flooded zone. “So I don’t know if she’s good. Swimming? Not swimming?”

Thwarted on foot, Colwell and her friends vowed to try to use a high-clearance vehicle to reach her mother.

Sidlauskas, the deputy fire chief, echoed her frustration. "It’s definitely a bad scene. This is a Level A evacuation zone. That’s why the order to evacuate was issued two days ago. We’re out there risking lives of responders for residents who failed to heed that warning... (and) all those areas are now without power or water.”

Rick Neale is a reporter for Florida Today in Melbourne, part of the USA Today Network-Florida.

Dan Glaun, a reporter with The News-Press in Fort Myers and the Naples Daily News, contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Hurricane Idalia leaves trail of destruction along Gulf Coast