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Residents Of Areas Still Under Water Seek Help
May 6, 2014
Residents of the north end of Holsberry Road are pleading for help as water still stands in their homes, almost a week after the area’s floods. Residents are blaming an overflowing holding pond at nearby McArthur Elementary School for their flooding, and they are hoping Escambia County will help.
On Monday, about a dozen residents on the northern end of Holsberry, just off East 10 Mile Road still had a few feet of murky standing water in their homes. A Mennonite Christian Disaster Team installed some piping and a pump on Monday to help alleviate the problem.
Commissioner Steven Barry, whose district includes the area, surveyed the situation on Monday. He said he learned late Monday afternoon that the county will be aided by the Florida Department of Transportation to redesign the hold pond and looking at other methods to help make sure the area does not flood in the future.
The deepest standing water in District 5 remains in the Ponderosa area north of Nine MileRoad , where water remains “at least waist high” in some homes, Barry said.
Escambia County has rented one 10,000 gallon gallon vacuum truck to supplement existing equipment to drain standing water in the area. “It’s making a difference,” according to the commissioner.
The county will look toward drainage improvements in that area.
“I don’t know what will be different, but the drainage won’t be what it was a week ago today,” Barry said. “We are going to find a way to improve it.”
Pictured: Water still stands on Holsberry Road and inside residences on the street. Submitted photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Comments
7 Responses to “Residents Of Areas Still Under Water Seek Help”
The problem in most areas were that the holding ponds filled so fast that water had no place to go. These ponds are not designed for the amount of rain that we had. All the drainage system on Oakfield and Burgess were covered in caked on dirt and leaves and the water could not drain. Had to run down the hill to drain. During Ivan I went down and cleaned 7 drainage holes on Burgess so water could drain. Did not want to go out with all the lighting to do it again. The county doesn’t do a good job in keeping the drainage systems cleaned out. They are not pro active they wait for the problem to surface before they do any thing.
Thank you so much for reporting this, and for helping get it to the attention of Commisioner Barry!
I spoke with one of the Mennonites and he told me they noticed the area wasn’t draining so they just went to work on it. In the midst of all the tragedy of the flooding, people doing that out of the goodness of their hearts reaffirms my faith in God and humanity.
Where is FEMA?
Exactly Jane!!!
The drains are not draining in this area either…..it’s awful. Three of these houses are my family members and they lost everything. Water was waist deep in their house and had to be rescued by bass boat. They water in the yard was chest high on my 6′ nephew……something very wrong with the drainage in this area. The county needs to send an engineer immediately to correct this problem , so that this doesn’t
happen again.
Thanks so much for reporting this. There are quite a few areas in the Ensley/Cantonment/Gonzalez area which have flooded and have received little or no media attention. Hopefully, the disaster relief organizations are aware of them.
If you live in these areas, make sure you report your situation to one of the Disaster Relief organizations such as the one staged at Hillcrest Baptist.
If you’re in the affected areas, please know you’re in our prayers.
If you’ve been helping those in any of the affected areas…make sure you keep in touch with the victims…I think so many of these folks feel isolated/abandoned/forgotten. These folks are going to be dealing with this for quite some time. Let’s not forget about them.
Thanks to all that have given of their time/money/efforts/sweat/tears to help their neighbors in need.
We have all this flooding here and the County, state and Feds have done nothing to help the problems. The churches and the people have done it. But we can send millions of dollars to other countries, like Afganistan. Something is not right here.