Hurricane Ian expected to deluge low-lying areas of Volusia and Flagler counties

DAYTONA BEACH — With Hurricane Ian bearing down, Gene Lytwyn labored through an all-too-familiar routine Tuesday morning: securing his Beach Street business for the deluge of floodwater sure to come.

Lytwyn's Fishin' Hole at the corner of Beach Street and Fairview Avenue sits on a low spot across from the Halifax River. And for the 34 years he and his wife have run the business, hurricanes and even severe rainstorms have sent anywhere from a few inches to a few feet of water pouring into the small building that's been a bait and tackle store for close to 100 years.

He spent Monday and Tuesday putting as much merchandise as possible on the second floor of the building he owns next door. He also went to work clearing out and unplugging his freezers and coolers in his shop, and strategically placing sandbags.

"It's a wooden building, so water will seep in around the sandbags," Lytwyn said. "The flooding is inevitable here, so we go through the routine. It got to be 32 inches inside the shop during the 2004 hurricanes."

As the roaring Hurricane Ian barrels closer to Florida, people throughout Volusia and Flagler counties are doing their best this week to protect against the unrelenting rain forecast to dump over the area and likely leave behind pockets of flooding.

Those who've lived in the area for a decade or more have memories of people floating through neighborhoods in small boats and rafts to get around.

Some of Daytona Beach's most vulnerable areas for sudden rising water are the Beach Street corridor from Bethune Point Park to Mason Avenue, the Midtown and Fairway Estates neighborhoods between International Speedway Boulevard and Beville Road, and other low-lying areas such as Segrave Street and George Engram Boulevard around Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

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On the west side of Volusia County, areas along the St. Johns River have been inundated with high water after hurricanes and tropical storms, as have areas of Flagler County.

Flagler County is urging residents living east of Interstate 95, in mobile homes or in low-lying areas to be prepared to evacuate.

Hunkering down for Hurricane Ian

Mountains of sand in Volusia and Flagler counties have been shoveled into bags as residents and business owners do their best to hold back expected surges of wandering water.

On Monday, Daytona Beach distributed 12,000 sandbags and thousands more were given out Tuesday. The city will continue its sandbag operation in the parking lot near the southeast corner of Orange Avenue and Jean Street until 5 p.m. Wednesday.

City crews were also in parks Tuesday picking up loose items, and they went to active construction sites including the Dickerson Center and sidewalk on Beville Road to secure the areas.

Yard debris will be picked up Wednesday as usual, but residential and commercial garbage collections have been suspended for Thursday and Friday. Normal collections are expected to resume Monday.

The fishing section of the pier will be closed from Wednesday until after the storm, and will only reopen when the structural integrity is confirmed.

The city's utility crews did a lot of flooding prevention work when there was uncertainty in Hurricane Fiona’s path. All standby generators have been tested to confirm that they're operational and fuel tanks have been topped off.

All emergency pumps have been tested to confirm they're functioning properly, and crews have confirmed the availability of rental standby pumps.

Two storm water ponds were drained down 3 feet below normal levels, and generators and fuel tanks have been checked at wastewater treatment facilities.

Vulnerable flooding targets

Areas around Daytona Beach's Nova Road canal and another canal that carries water from Daytona Beach International Airport east to the river have also filled with floodwater over the decades.

Two pubic housing complexes east of the Nova canal, Caroline Village and Palmetto Park, are on the receiving end of what can spill out of those canals. Daytona Beach Housing Authority Executive Director Charles Woodyard said Tuesday he's working to protect the residents in those aging, one-story housing complexes.

"We've stocked up on sandbags and we've boarded up vacant units," Woodyard said. "We've given people cell phone emergency numbers to call, and we've put our administrative staff on 24-hour call. We've gassed up our vehicles, and we have waterproof clothing to wear."

Woodyard said residents of Caroline Village and Palmetto Park have been told that if the forecast calls for rainfall of 10-12 inches or more in Daytona Beach, they should evacuate.

A private company runs the Windsor and Maley apartments on Beach Street now, a property once exclusively owned and run by the Housing Authority. But Woodyard said he gave some advice to the new owners to prepare for the river water that can flow toward the two high-rise apartment towers.

New retention ponds and improvements to drainage since Orange Avenue was overhauled are hoped to help with flooding in Daytona Beach's urban core.

Cynthia Slater has watched the Midtown neighborhood between Nova Road and Ridgewood Avenue flood over and over in her 66 years living there.

"Growing up as kids we couldn't wait for the floods to play in the water," Slater said.

Now the rising water is a dreaded headache for her.

"It doesn't necessarily have to be a hurricane for it to flood. It can be a tropical storm," she said. "We're just in this bowl-shaped area of Midtown where the water sinks in. You can have all the sandbags you want. If the drainage isn't proper it will flood every time."

Slater grew up north of Mary McLeod Bethune Boulevard, and for the past 27 years she has lived south of Orange Avenue around the flood-prone Cottle Circle area.

She said a new retention pond has helped the flooding, and the last bad high water she recalls was in 2016 or 2017 when hurricanes Matthew and Irma hit Daytona Beach.

West Volusia nervously waits

In Astor, homeowner Layne Hendrickson said that her family has stocked up on supplies and has a generator ready to power their home in the shadow of the State Road 40 bridge on the banks of the St. Johns River in western Volusia County.

"We are concerned about any storm that comes our way, because we’ve gone through quite a few of them," said Hendrickson, 66, standing outside the home that she shares with her husband, Al, an Astor native, as well as her daughter, son-in-law and their two children.

"We take all the warnings seriously and we have everything ready to go,” she said.

It’s a checklist that included clearing the yard of objects that could become projectiles in high winds, hoisting the family’s boat out of the water and securely battening it down.

More than the high winds associated with Ian’s initial arrival, Hendrickson is worried about the prospect of flooding that could occur after the storm has passed.

"My biggest concern is the flooding that will take place after the fact," she said. "After (Hurricane) Irma (in 2017), my husband said that the river rose to the highest level he had ever seen in his whole life, and he’s 70 years old."

In the wake of heavy late-summer rains, the St. Johns River at Astor is already at flood stage. As Ian approaches Florida, the National Weather Service in Melbourne has warned residents to prepare for life-threatening rainfall flooding across east Central Florida.

Although her family doesn’t intend to evacuate, Hendrickson is keeping a close eye on the river.

"Because the river is up, and the ground’s pretty saturated, there’s not too many places for the extra rain to go and disperse," she said. "The river’s just going to get higher."

In DeBary, the potential for damage from extended heavy rains also was on the minds of residents of the Highbanks Marina and Camp Resort on the banks of the St. Johns River.

"We drained our pond, so that it doesn’t wash our entrance road away," said James Raburn, maintenance director at the RV park and campground that accommodates more than 200 residents during its peak summer and winter seasons. "We’ve been going around bringing in all the picnic tables, picking up other loose things like chairs or flower pots."

The marina sits high enough that there isn’t much concern about flooding, Raburn said. Instead, the prospect of as much as 15 inches of rain from Ian on the already-saturated grounds has sparked concern about whether some of the tall pine trees might be toppled, he said.

"We have a lot of big trees," he said. "The main concern here is downed limbs."

'Here we go again'

In New Smyrna Beach, residents had Sunday, Monday and Tuesday to fill up or receive sandbags at the Sports Complex football stadium on Sunset Drive.

On Tuesday morning, the city said it had handed out 8,300 sandbags at the site.

Some residents on the city’s beachside are paying close attention to the storm and not neglecting preparations, as some homes in the area are prone to flooding.

Randy Keller, a Goodwin Avenue resident, had already positioned his sandbags in his home and is preparing to evacuate and stay with friends nearby.

"We flooded in Matthew, we flooded in Irma," Keller said, adding that the water is his real concern. "We are probably going to get flooded again. We are worried more about the water than we are of the wind."

In 2017, after Hurricane Irma, Keller said he came home to find 13 inches of water had gotten inside his house.

"You lose cabinets, couches, you lose carpets, a lot of stuff," he said. "I remember, you could drive down the street and everything’s on the curb – couches, carpets, appliances, everything."

Keller and his family have just gotten back from vacation in Italy and were frustrated to see they would come home to another storm.

"We were watching (the news) and we were like 'oh boy,' " he said. "It’s that feeling of like, 'here we go again.' "

In an email to The News-Journal, the city’s director of maintenance operation, David Ray, said that the city will have "portable pumps … deployed in the hot spots that we know are prone to flooding."

"We have also brought in backup generators for those areas that have permanent pumps," Ray added.

Some area residents are not worried about flooding in their homes but are also taking precautions to avoid the storm’s possible damage.

Cedar Avenue resident Neil Sinclair was helping fix a neighbor’s window before the storm. He has lived in the city for more than 10 years and does not think Ian will pose much of a threat to his home.

Although he "fully expects" his backyard to flood, Sinclair isn’t concerned about his house, which is elevated.

Flagler Beach hunkering down

Flagler Beach Sanitation Director Rob Smith estimated the city had given out about 5,000 to 6,000 sandbags.

He said that included about 30 to 40 tons of recycled glass from "Big Blue," the city’s glass recycling machine which started operating in April.

"It’s cool to tell the folks that put (the glass) out a month ago for recycle, that they are using it now to save their house from getting wet," Smith said on Tuesday.

Matt Hathaway was one of the people picking up sandbags on Tuesday in Flagler Beach hoping to keep the interior of his house on John Anderson Highway dry.

"Irma came in the garage, didn’t make it in the house," Hathaway said. "We’re hoping it won’t be as bad."

But he said he was concerned. He said so far he had collected 100 sand bags for home defense against Ian.

"Just trying to be prepared as we can," said Hathaway, indicating the bags loaded in his vehicle. "This is one-third of the sandbags that we are going to use. Give it a shot. See what we can do."

Chris Marlow, co-owner of the Golden Lion in Flagler Beach, had loaded up 20 to 25 sandbags to protect the restaurant on A1A.

"Just do the front doors, try to keep the water out," Marlow said. "We have a great staff. We appreciate everything that everybody's doing to get the restaurant ready for the storm and fingers-cross hopefully this thing will go the other way and we can get back to selling cheeseburgers this weekend."

Staff writers Jim Abbott, Brenno Carillo and Frank Fernandez contributed to this report

You can reach Eileen at Eileen.Zaffiro@news-jrnl.com

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Hurricane Ian could dump close to a foot of water on Volusia County