As Hurricane Debby made its way north Monday, it left a trail of flooding and power outages in parts of Florida still recovering from several other major storms that have pummeled the Gulf Coast in recent years.
The Category 1 hurricane made landfall north of Steinhatchee, about 80 miles west of Gainesville. That’s just 20 miles south of where Hurricane Idalia hit Florida as a Category 3 storm less than a year ago.
Though Idalia had far stronger winds, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) warned residents that Debby would bring “way more water.”
“There’s gonna be a lot of water being dumped on the state, and we’ll see effects of that in the ensuing days,” DeSantis said at a morning news conference from the state’s Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee.
Even before Debby hit land, the storm’s outer bands were bringing déjà vu to coastal towns from the Florida Keys up through Tampa Bay. The Sarasota Police Department posted photos of water rushing past damaged businesses. Photos and video shared on social media showed flooding outside stores and restaurants in Fort Myers Beach, which was decimated by Hurricane Ian in 2022. Officials there warned people there Sunday to shelter in place.
“It is possible there is still debris in the water from Hurricane Ian, that could resurface, making it dangerous to swim or drive through water that has made its way on land,” the town said in a press release.
Bridges over Tampa Bay were closed, as were schools and courthouses in more than a dozen north Florida counties. Early voting scheduled to begin Monday for the Aug. 20 primaries was canceled in several counties as well. Over 250,000 utility customers were without electricity, according to poweroutage.us.
Seven coastal counties issued mandatory evacuation orders ahead of the storm for people on barrier islands and in other low-lying or flood-prone areas.
Florida Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said Monday that rivers and streams “are rapidly rising,” and the impacts from floods and high water will be felt “for the next five to seven days, even 10 days.”
“Conditions will continue to deteriorate,” Guthrie said. “We expect to have several rivers and streams go into major flood stage.”
Several thousand Florida National Guard troops were on standby to help with search and rescue operations if needed. Seventeen thousand linemen were also being deployed to help get power restored.
Forecasters predicted that some of the most serious impacts could be in the days to come as Debby moves onward to southeast Georgia and the eastern Carolinas. The system is expected to stall and unleash “potentially historic” amounts of rain and “catastrophic flooding,” according to the National Hurricane Center. A few areas could see record-breaking amounts near 30 inches.
Florida’s Gulf Coast and inland central and northern parts of the state have endured several powerful storms since 2022. Ian struck southwest Florida as a Category 4 storm in September 2022. Over 150 people were killed directly or indirectly because of the storm. Hurricane Nicole slammed the east coast two months later. Hurricane Idalia last year resulted in 12 fatalities and caused an estimated $3.6 billion in damage in the United States, according to a National Hurricane Center report.
No deaths had been reported as of early Monday due to Debby.
(c) Washington Post