City of Oldsmar, Florida Disaster Prep, 31 Dec 2015

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From YouTube: Prepare to Survive - El Niño | Why Pinellas?

Description

What makes Pinellas County particularly vulnerable to flooding during El Niño seasons? In this special edition of Prepare to Survive, Kelli Levy, public works division manager at Pinellas County Natural Resources, explains the dangers heavy rain poses to low-lying parts of the county. Tarpon Woods resident Dennis Peek describes the flooding his neighborhood experienced during a recent heavy rain event and how homeowners can prepare themselves.

Check out all six segments of Prepare to Survive – Special Edition El Niño here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2oRjtRi088Dl-HLroX7jEoovAg1mlvnf

For more information on El Niño, visit http://www.pinellascounty.org/emergency/El-Nino.htm

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Libby: welcome back to this special edition of "prepare to survive.", I'm libby bolling with pinellas county communications.

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Joining me now to talk about why pinellas county is vulnerable to.

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Extreme rainfall events and flooding is kelli levy, public.

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Works: division manager with pinellas county natural resources.. Thank you for joining us,, kelli., kelli: great to be here,, libby., libby: and dennis peek,, a longtime resident of the tarpon.

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Woods subdivision. thank you for joining us,, dennis. dennis: nice to be here., libby: kelli,. Why is pinellas so vulnerable to flooding?.

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Kelli: well,, it has a lot to do with our location right on.

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The gulf of mexico., we have the anclote river to the north.

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of course,, the gulf to the west, and tampa bay to the east., so we're surrounded by water. we're very low-lying.. Our elevation is very low.

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Our soils are, in many ways,, not very permeable.,.

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In many areas,, our groundwater table is high.

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When you just look at all of those characteristics, together,.

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They make us susceptible to extreme events, and that's part.

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Of why we struggle with flooding events.

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Libby: um-hum.- and I know that this past july and august we experienced some.

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Flooding in localized areas.

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and one of those areas was the brooker creek area in tarpon.

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Woods., can you describe what happened there? kelli: well, prior to that event, we had received several.

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Weeks of rainfall,, and so our storage areas,, our natural.

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Storage areas, our wetlands and those systems, were completely.

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Full. and even our artificial systems,, like ponds,, were full., so there was nowhere for the water to go, and we received an.

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Extraordinary amount of rain over a couple of days, and the.

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System was already to capacity..

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There was just nowhere for the water to go.

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the tarpon woods community sits within the floodplain of brooker.

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Creek, and the creek elevation came up, way up and spread out.

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Right into the community. and that's what happened during that event.

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Libby: now, dennis, you've lived through a lot of these.

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Events. you've been in the tarpon woods subdivision. and, if folks don't know where it is,, it's in the northeast corner.

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Of pinellas county, south of brooker creek, north of the.

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Oldsmar area., can you tell us about what people need to understand about.

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One of these flooding events, what the community needed to.

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Understand? dennis: the flooding events -- I've lived there since '94,.

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My wife and I, and the flooding events can happen very quickly.

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As kelli was pointing out,, we were already a saturated system.

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The ground was wet., there was no place for the water to run off., so it rose literally overnight.. I woke up that saturday morning,, the 25th of july,, and there.

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Was 18, 20 inches of water in the street. the night before it was not., so it rose that quickly..

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You just have to be prepared for those kind of events..

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They are not very common.. This is the worst event I had seen since -- well, worst event.

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Since I've lived there., we had a similar event when tropical storm debby rained on us in 2012,, but it went away after three or four days.

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This did not go away because we really had kind of the front.

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Move south, rained, and then moved back north, rained again.

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So we were stuck for a couple of weeks unable to go, get out.

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So the primary thing is to keep an eye on the weather., be watchful of it., keep an eye out for alerts, flood warnings..

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They can happen so quickly. be prepared. Almost like a hurricane preparation.

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make sure you've got food, water, medicine,, whatever you.

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Need for the short term, because you may not be able to get out.

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For six or seven days. and that's what happened to us., we got out partly,, maybe for half a day after a week, and.

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Then we got hit again, and we were stuck for another week..

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Even people with high-wheeled vehicles, tall suvs, were.

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Having trouble getting in and out., the sheriff's department did respond. The second week with.

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Their mraps and humvees, which were higher and could get some people in and out or get some medical help in for some people.

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That were confined.

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Libby: kelli, the brooker creek area,. I mean, that is,.

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You know, a swampy area,, but there are other areas in the.

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County where flooding happens, and it may be because storm.

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Drains are clogged, things like that..

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Can you talk about that?, kelli:, yeah.

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I mean, having a well-maintained stormwater management system is.

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Going to be critical to a community's flood control.

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And we're fortunate in the unincorporated area that the board adopted the surface water assessment in 2013, and that.

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Allowed us to ramp up these maintenance activities in several areas, doing a lot more, ditch maintenance, cleaning out.

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Pipes, cleaning out storm drains,, which really, when we.

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Look at the area and the flooding that occurred, compared to some other areas,, we fared very well.

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and the areas that were hit are areas that we know. About.

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They are in the floodplains of creeks, of major creeks..

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We had flooding in the bee branch system, flooding in the brooker creek system, flooding in the cross, bayou.

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System. all areas that we're aware of,, but they are naturally low-lying areas.. So the fact that we have been able to really ramp up those.

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Efforts to maintain and manage our system better, I think, is.

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Really paying off.

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Libby: and there was a project at the brooker creek area in the.

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Last few years that even helped in this situation, that helped.

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The tarpon woods subdivision fare better than they had in the.

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Past., can you describe that project?.

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Kelli: there was actually a few stages to it,, but the last piece of it was the brooker creek bypass within the tarpon.

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Woods, community. and, ultimately,, the water flows were directed around the.

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Community and further downstream into brooker creek.

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And what we observed during this last event, that dennis was just.

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Describing was that they got an extra foot of protection.

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Usually the roads were flooding when the elevation of the creek.

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Was around 11. and this time we started seeing the flooding around 12., so it really did perform well..

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It was just extraordinary circumstances, and the creek.

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Went even higher than that.

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Libby: dennis,, I know that it's important for neighbors to.

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Get information and keep connected.

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and you were using a web application..

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Could you describe what that was?

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dennis:? It's called "nextdoor.".

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It's a free application., it's kind of like facebook for neighborhoods.

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someone in the neighborhood some years back had set it up, and it had been mostly garage. Sales, lost, dog, lost bike, kind of.

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Thing,, but this became extremely critical during this period.

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Because we were able to communicate among the neighbors,.

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Among the people in the neighborhood., there are about three or four hundred people., so there was a lot of e-mail traffic.

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people would post questions..

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When this happened. Saturday, by monday,, I had contacted.

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Dave eggers' office,, and he put me in touch with kelli.

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So kelli and I were exchanging information several times a day.

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Morning, updates, weather information., I kind of functioned as a forward observer and gave them feedback on what was happening and what neighbors were concerned about. So we could post that information and get the.

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Word out faster to people if rain was expected over the next weekend or whatever they needed to do.

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And people internally started using it, offering help to.

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Their neighbors. somebody with a truck that could get in and out, was going around and picking people up and letting them know they were coming to take them up to the grocery store,. Things of that.

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Nature. so it proved invaluable.. The interesting thing is neighbors started to pull.

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Together. and now neighbors, who got out okay, would send a message back from their phone that they were able to get out. Through, say,.

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The main entrance on east lake., so it did help, and it improved communication, I think, within the neighborhood. and that continues to this day. nearly,. I would guess, three-fourths of the households.

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In the neighborhood are now signed up and get updates.

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Libby:, so communication is a key component of mitigating.

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These issues, isn't it, kelli?.

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Kelli: yes. dennis proved --. I mean, he was invaluable to us.

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I mean, he's eyes out there and boots on the ground and could.

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Really report back on what he was seeing., but we used it to dispel rumors multiple times.

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We used it to share updates on the creek levels, on what we.

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Were expecting to see., if we received this much rain,, we would expect the creek to rise this much..

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So we would be able to share that information out there.

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and we also were encouraging everyone in the community to sign up for the code red through our emergency management.

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Department, so that you can get that emergency information to.

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Your cell phone or your e-mail or both, any way you want it.

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Anyone in the county can -- should be signing up for that and using it. you know,. If you want that information from the county, letting you know that, there's something going on in your area, within your zip code,, whether it be a tornado,, a flooding, event,.

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You know,, you can get that information, and those two tools.

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Really helped quite a bit. libby:, that's great.

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Dennis: definitely. libby: any one. Last -- we're running out of time.

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dennis: running out of time.

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One thing in particular,: there were a lot of newcomers in the area that were not familiar with the kind of flooding we see up.

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There. this is not unusual.. This was an unusual event., almost one in a hundred year., but newcomers need to understand that when creek water, rises,.

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Whether brooker, creek or somewhere, else, be aware that you may have alligators or water moccasins come up with that water, and we do see them in the neighborhood.. It's not a major problem,, but they are there..

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Keep the kids out of the water.

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Libby: yes. well, thank you for joining us, dennis. and thank you, kelli.. If you'd like more information about pinellas, county's, stormwater and watershed programs, visit: and if you'd like more information about flooding in.

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Pinellas county, visit:.