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  • 10 months ago
Nearly 10 days after record rain, pockets of standing water linger as one Florida town begins to rebuild under a decades-old stormwater plan.
Transcript
00:00This is where the water line ended up, and as you can see, we lost everything in our house.
00:06Cindy Smith has weathered Florida storms since the 1960s,
00:10but last month's record rainfall did more damage than any hurricane she's ever seen.
00:15We climbed out of our front window at 9.30 at night and walked up the street in waist-deep water to get out.
00:22The water just kept pouring into the house.
00:24It was very surprising, you know, I'm sorry.
00:30On October 26th, a stalled front and steady onshore winds fueled repeated downpours,
00:37flooding the same areas over and over.
00:40My housemate went down in a room and he got trapped, so I called 911.
00:45It's something you never want to have to do.
00:48You're in fight-or-flight mode, everything's just...
00:52In the wake of the floods, Titusville will overhaul a stormwater plan mainly untouched since 1966.
01:00Now, the city of Titusville has put in pumps.
01:03As you can see here, several spots are set up here across the city.
01:06They're running 24-7, but the folks that live here say this was too little, too late.
01:11Disaster crews have boots on the ground, providing critical help to clean and clear homes.
01:16Right now, we're in there tearing out drywall that's wet, so they'll be able to move back in.
01:21It won't be pretty, but it'll be clean and safe.
01:24In these older neighborhoods, many retirees live on fixed incomes.
01:29Without flood insurance, recovery is slow and, for some, out of reach.
01:34We got to stay here.
01:35We can't just go out and buy another house.
01:37Well, I was in Vietnam and this thing, this really got me.
01:41In Titusville, Florida, I'm Leslie Hudson for AccuWeather.
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