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Rain brings a flood of problems to West Pasco

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BY LISA A. DAVIS

THE TAMPA TRIBUNE

Published: July 4, 2009

PORT RICHEY - David Smith was ready to start his new job bright and early Wednesday, but Mother Nature got in his way.

"Ironically, this is my first day back to work in eight months, and now I'm late," said Smith, who was laid off from his previous job. "It's a real kick in the butt."

After rain saturated the Suncoast on Tuesday night and throughout Wednesday, Smith's Gulf Highlands neighborhood, north of Port Richey and east of U.S. 19, became filled with waterfront property, but not the prime real estate kind. About 15 to 20 streets in the subdivision were washed out by early afternoon, and the rain kept falling off and on throughout the day.

Smith said he would have driven to his new job, about a mile away at R.S. Supplies, but the water kept him from driving. Instead, clad in shorts and water shoes and boots strung on his neck, he waded through mucky water, pushing his bicycle to Ranch Road from his Manchester Road home before 8 a.m.

"I'm upset. ... I don't know if I'll lose my job because of this," Smith said before hopping on his bicycle and riding away.

Nearby, employees from Community Aging and Retirement Services' Phil Mishkin Center, unable to make their way through the flooded streets to their dry parking lot, stood around on Ranch Road waiting for phone calls from their supervisors.

"We usually get here at 7:30. Well, we got here at 7:30, but we can't get in," data-entry worker Lin Nichols, 60, said at 7:50 a.m. Wednesday.

There was talk that supervisors might send workers home, but that didn't sit well with Lucy Marcano, a 44-year-old case manager assistant.

"We have so much to do," Marcano said. "It's billing time today, and all the clients who need us, they depend on us."

Pasco County Office of Emergency Management officials, deputies and firefighters flooded the neighborhood, too, trying to prevent motorists from driving through floodwaters and helping people evacuate. Voluntary evacuations began about 6:30 a.m., said Paul Latham, an Emergency Management coordinator.

By early afternoon, nine families had requested assistance, and two families briefly sought shelter at nearby St. Mark's Presbyterian Church on State Road 52, where the American Red Cross had disaster relief workers waiting to help.

"They had flooding inside their homes," Latham said, adding that few homes appeared to have water inside.

By 3:50 p.m., no one else had shown up at the county's only open shelter, said Janet McGuire, Pasco American Red Cross' manager of preparedness and response and disaster communications. She wondered whether residents who left early in the morning for work would need help if they came home and found their road under water.

Progress Energy crews stood by in the subdivision in case power needed to be shut off at homes because of the flooding. By early afternoon, about a dozen homes were without power.

Other roads in Pasco, particularly on the west side of the county, were flooded - parts of Oelsner Drive and Avery Road in New Port Richey, Sunset Road in Port Richey and Scenic Drive, just north of the city near Gulf View Square mall.

For a time Wednesday, crime scene tape was stretched across Bay Boulevard at its intersection with Old Post Road, creating a temporary roadblock. Just before noon, however, police and city workers allowed supervised traffic flow to resume along the still-inundated section of Bay Boulevard.

No major problems were reported outside Gulf Highlands, Latham said. Emergency Management officials monitored the situation throughout Wednesday night. Following the day's downpour they were warning motorists not to drive through barricades and into standing water because it was difficult to gauge the depth or what was in the water.

"There's no telling what's in these storm drains," Latham said.

Robert Hibbs of The Suncoast News contributed to this report.

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