- April 19, 2024
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Hurricane Ian brought historic levels of flooding to Volusia County, causing more than $156 million in damage to homes and businesses, per preliminary numbers from the Volusia County Property Appraiser. Five people died, two of them by drowning.
Like its neighboring municipalities, Ormond Beach experienced historic levels of flooding.
At one point during the storm, Ormond Beach Public Works Director Shawn Finley said, his staff estimated that about 15%-20% of streets in Ormond Beach were experiencing some degree of flooding.
“The majority of the flooding that we saw was due to high tide and high river levels, and creek levels, and that overflowing to the streets, even more so than localized rain flooding in low areas,” Finley said.
The city began preparing for Ian on Wednesday, Sept. 21, by pumping down the lakes in Central Park as much as possible. By the time the storm arrived, the city had lowered its Central Park lakes about a foot, Finley said.
“Which may not seem like a lot, but it’s a huge volume of water, and it freed up a lot of space for some of the water to go,” Finley said. “When the hurricane started and things started rising, it went fast. Those levels jumped up really fast.”
Fleming Avenue was one of the streets that saw significant levels of flooding, and the city placed portable pumps there to remove the water quickly.
Other areas that flooded include Wilmette Avenue, John Anderson Drive and Tomoka Oaks, and the neighborhoods surrounding the Ormond Beach Performing Arts Center, which Finley said experienced the worst flooding about 12 hours after the storm when next high tide came in from nearby Strickland Creek.
The fact that neighborhoods west of I-95 also experienced flooding was surprising to Finley as well — Hunter’s Ridge, Breakaway Trails and the new Pineland subdivision were among those impacted.
Fortunately, though many streets flooded, fewer than 20 homes had interior flooding, the city’s preliminary data shows — a reduction from the 60-70 estimated homes that flooded during the 2009 storm events.
Much of the flooding has since receded in the city, and the next challenge will be inspecting the roadways for structural issues.
“The immediate problem was the impassibility of the roads,” Finley said. “So we want to make sure there aren’t any other problems that were caused by that flooding.”
For the future, Finley would like to look into projects to would keep water at bay when river levels rise.
“Obviously, when you have a storm like this, there’s money that becomes available,” he said. “... Those will be some of the grants that we’ll be trying to seek out, or ones that can help us with that resiliency and to create a community that prevents, does everything it can to try and find ways to keep that water from coming back on us.”
Finley asked residents continue to limit nonessential water use for the next couple of days to help the city’s water wastewater treatment plant levels return to normal.
The Citizens for Ormond Beach candidate forum originally scheduled for Sept. 28 — and canceled due to Hurricane Ian — will now be held on Wednesday, Oct. 12.
The forum will feature candidates for Ormond Beach mayor, City Commission Zone 4, Volusia County Council District 4 and at-large. The forum will be held at the Ormond Beach Senior Center at 351 Andrews St. It will have a meet-and-greet opportunity from 6 to 6:30 p.m. The forum will start at 6:30 p.m.
Volusia County experienced significant and widespread damage to its coastal infrastructure as a result of Hurricane Ian, Ben Bartlett, Volusia County public works director, said during the council meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 4.
“It’s worse than Matthew,” he said.
The county reported dune erosion and multiple seawall failures. Fifteen of its 33 beach ramps need major repairs, 91 of its 140 walkovers are closed, and all 16 coastal parks sustained some damage. Two parks in particular — Lighthouse Point Park and jetty in Ponce Inlet and Frank Rendon Park in Daytona Beach Shores — were damaged significantly.
Bartlett said the county has met with FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers to discuss emergency protection measures.
Councilwoman Billie Wheeler said she recently drove from Ponce Inlet to Ormond-by-the-Sea was “blown away” by the volume of damages.
“It is absolutely the saddest thing I have ever seen — what’s happened to our beaches, and the homes and the condos,” she said.
