Idalia leaves St. Pete roads impassable and neighborhoods flooded
As powerful Hurricane Idalia made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region Wednesday morning, St. Petersburg awoke to flooding in low-lying areas of the city that made popular roads and walkways lining the bay impassable.
People emerged, some with dogs and kids in tow, to survey the damage. Water, roughly 2 feet deep, poured over the rainboots of residents in Snell Isle. A paddle boarder navigated the high water along Coffee Pot Boulevard, snapping photographs of a submerged silver Lexus. In Shore Acres, firefighters rescued residents from flooded homes.
Water started rushing into Janecia Wallace’s house at 6 a.m. By sunrise, it was coming into her room.
“We were loading water into buckets in our sinks and bathroom,” said the 18-year-old Shore Acres resident. “It’s come in before, but never this high or this bad.”
The St. Petersburg Fire Department ferried her and nine other residents to safety.
Downtown, stretches of Bayshore Drive SE were completely flooded. Cars and bikers zoomed down First Avenue SE and turned right onto Bayshore, only to be stopped in their tracks by the water lapping out of the bay.
“This is high tide now?” Al Bennett, 60, director of athletics, physical education and driver’s education for Pinellas County Schools, asked another passerby.
“Low tide,” answered Tom Kimler, 67, a retired firefighter.
“We could have nasty flooding here,” Bennett remarked, looking at the waves to the left and right of him on the road.
“It’s nasty already,” Kimler said.
Parts of First Street S were also submerged near Third Avenue S. Even at low tide, the road leading to the entrance of the Dali Museum was covered in more than a foot of water.
Palm fronds and smaller twigs on the oak trees that surround the parks near the St. Pete Pier and the Museum of Fine Arts were downed. But large branches appeared to have been spared.
High water was the big issue.
St. Petersburg police officers turned people away from the pier, which closed because of significant flooding.
“We have several of my officers trying to get people out of there,” said Sgt. Steve Sequeira. He noted officers were worried about people being caught in the rising tide coming in.
Richard “The Hawk” Hawkins, 68, sat outside the pier’s entrance near Fresco’s Waterfront Bistro. Water was over a foot deep.
Another man, Steve Harley, 64, was lying next to him with a cigarette in his mouth.
“We were right here,” said Hawkins, who is experiencing homelessness. “We remain totally dry, amazingly.”
Hawkins motioned to the flooded bay water around him.
“And look at the lake,” he said. “I mean, it’s right there. We were almost in the lake.”
He’d braced for the worst.
“I was going with the fact that it was probably going to hit us directly,” said Hawkins, who opted not to evacuate to a shelter over fears he’d find trouble inside. “We were just prepared to get wiped. Just slaughtered. Prepared to swim for our lives.”
The pair planned to leave the pier later Wednesday, once buses started running again, to escape high tide.
But downtown wasn’t the only place inundated.
Further north, at Twin City Mobile Home Park, chemicals gave floodwaters that spilled through the manufactured home community a rainbow sheen — cut only by the paddleboard 19-year-old Bryce Roy used to navigate his neighbors to their homes.
Many of the park’s residents are older or disabled, factors that can hinder evacuation efforts and make moving an even steeper hurdle.
“Everybody is on a low income,” Roy remarked as he paddled through the neighborhood, surveying the homes. “It’s for people who don’t get good pay. So after something like this happens, it’s difficult to go anywhere else.”
James Lawson, 60, said everything he owned was destroyed when floodwaters rose in the mobile home park at about 5 a.m. His outdoor tuxedo cat was still missing.
To see what had become of her home for nearly a decade, Tabitha Vavrick, 56, took her perch on Roy’s paddleboard.
She’d been through this before. Four times now, to be exact. Last time, she’d lost her car.
“This is it for us,” she said, tears welling. “We’re going back to Huntsville.”
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