Florida Today from Cocoa, Florida • Page 2

2A FLORIDA TODAY, Friday, August 4, 1995 v-3 Hurricane Erin aftermath: Brevard County fights floods east Palm Bay pulled a teen and his mother from a heavy-flowing drainage swale. The youth was cruising a flooded street on a kneeboard and was pulled into the swale by the strong current The boy's panic-stricken mother also was dragged downstream when she tried to rescue her son, witness Sean Grezaffi said. 'The current sucked him down," said Grezaffi, who lost a $220 pair of glasses rescuing the boy. "My neighbor grabbed the mother. I can guarantee he won't do that again." He said he didn't find out the names of the teen or his mother.

Deborah Park of Palm Bay was delivering a pizza when her truck went amphibious. 'The front end of the truck suddenly dropped, and water washed over the hood. I could feel the truck floating, and I knew I was in trouble," Park said. A canal had flooded across Riviera Drive. When she tried to drive across, the water took her for a ride.

'The current was real strong and I started floating down the canal," she said. "The truck was sinking. Water was swirling at my feet, so I decided to get out." Park, 5 feet tall, bailed out of the window into 8 feet of water. A passer-by jumped in and fished her out, "I got a lungful of water and lost my truck," Park said. Road also battled deep waters.

Working frantically to lay down sandbags before afternoon rains flooded the area again, these residents, too, pointed to continued building in the area as the cause of the flooding problem. Off Sarno on Garfield Avenue, Joel Burroughs lost his camping trailer when a 13-foot hole opened under the trailer after a drain pipe collapsed after Wednesday's drenching rains. Money, of the county's public safety office, expects to find more serious road damage over the next few days and weeks. "Dirt washed away could cause asphalt collapses," he said. "We're going to see lots and lots of potholes.

Places that normally see potholes are going to see a greater number of them, bigger than ever before." Other areas affected by the flooding included: Lake Washington Road at Turtle Mound Road. John Rodes Boulevard and Sheridan Road. Indian River Colony Club. Brevard received 9 to 12 inches of rain Wednesday. 'Those are 100-year floods when you get that kind of rain in that amount of time," Money said.

Palm Bay also had heavy damage along roadways from rising canal water and overflowing sewer lines. Wednesday, two men in north- a Some of Wednesday's flooding, in north Melbourne was caused by the washout of 60 feet of elevated railroad track near Post Road. The i track had served as a dam for floodwaters. "We got a call that a dam had burst," Money said. "We were here saying, 'A dam? In Brevard The 6 p.m.

washout delayed traffic along Florida's east coast Railroad workers fixed the track in five to six hours, but by Thursday afternoon trains were hopelessly behind schedule. For the first time, Brevard Court-: ty opened a recovery center Wednesday to help people deal with' Erin's aftermath. The center coordinates shelters, health services and aid from local and federal govern- ments for people affected by the storm. "We just graduated from kinder-' garten," Money said. "A lot of people in the recovery center have gained a lot of experience." Florida Today reporter Ed Garland i contributed to this article.

Correction The Moon Hut a Cape Canaveral restaurant, was-damaged in Hurricane but was able to open for business Thursday. An article in Thursday's edition wasr incorrect. '-1 Many residents of the 40-year-old neighborhood said they had more than 18 inches of water flowing through living rooms and basements. They blamed the flooding on a number of things, among them: continued building along U.S. 192 in West Melbourne, construction in the Viera area and drainage off the nearby Melbourne Municipal Golf Course.

Twenty-year resident Cecily Cain said she had more than 20 inches of rain in her studio. "This is the second time in less than a year that I have had to deal with this," Cain said. "Something is not right, and the city or county needs to correct the problem." Neighbor Larry Thomas said rains from Tropical Storm Gordon flooded Crane Creek last year, sending water rushing into his home. After that, neighbors banded together and planned to meet with city and county officials. But the city canceled the meeting, and residents never heard another word from anyone in city government.

"Every time something new is built along the highway or out west the flooding gets worse in our area," Thomas said. "The county and city need to build retention areas or fix Crane Creek so we don't have this problem." Flooding and recovery Most of the homes back the Melbourne Municipal Golf Course. Some residents think the city should dam the golf course when heavy rains are expected. Joanna Waterhouse, whose home had about 4 feet of water encroaching, agreed. "They could close the dam and flood the golf course until the rains were over," Waterhouse said.

"The course could take the water. Our homes can't." Residents of Parkway Meadows subdivision and areas off Sarno Grumbling County Manager Tom Jenkins met with representatives from all Brevard's cities Thursday to begin preparing a detailed log of all public and private damage incurred during Erin. They plan to present the log to the Federal Emergency Management Agency today. "What we're interested in is qualifying for federal assistance," Jenkins said. The county will apply for federal disaster aid plus extra money from programs such as those offered by the Small Business Administration.

Jenkins couldn't put a dollar figure on the damage, however. "We don't have the ability to estimate cost. The best we can do is describe the extent of the damage." Residents frustrated by inconveniences left in Erin's wake began grumbling hard and pointing fingers Thursday. Muriel Derr, a Merritt Island resident said she didn't think Florida Power Light Co. had recruited sufficient help to restore the county's power soon enough.

Her reasoning: No one she knew had seen any FPL trucks working in Central Brevard on Thursday. "I just don't see action. If I could see some action, I would certainly feel better," Derr said. "I got a freezer full of food gone. I got a refrigerator full of food gone.

And Florida Power Light isn't going to pay for any of this." FPL had 570 people working on Brevard's power problems Thursday, said Steve Dickinson, the company's Central Florida area manager. "Of those, 200 are contractors, so they wouldn't be driving trucks with Florida Power Light markings," he said. In Melbourne, residents of Golf Club Estates gathered near Crane Creek to talk about flooding problems and frustration with the city of Melbourne. in second assault on state FLOODS, From 1A "You've got to look at all this damage and then think, this was only a small Category 1 storm," said Jeff Money, division commander for Brevard County Public Safety. 'Tornadoes and flooding are what's really prolonging Erin's impact This was barely a hurricane.

"People have always said there's this mystical thing about Brevard County, that we never get hit by storms. Obviously, that doesn't exist anymore." Harold and Donna Maxwell of Lamplighter Village in West Melbourne say they were surprised by the storm and its aftermath. "For nearly 15 years, we've had no problems with flooding," Harold Maxwell said. But early Thursday, the Maxwells and about 1,000 other residents of the trailer community were told they would have to evacuate their homes for health reasons. A lake in the middle of the complex overflowed and eventually flooded the entire area of 620 trailers, backing up sewers into homes and completely covering roadways.

Alligators and fish joined the residents wading their way through the expanded lake. American Red Cross and National Guard members supervised the evacuation, helping residents load belongings and then taking them in a National Guard truck to awaiting buses. One quick-thinking manager also helped by driving his airboat up to the front door of residences too flooded to wade to. The Maxwells said they planned to sit tight "Why should we go to a shelter when we have everything here?" Harold Maxwell asked. 'There are other people in the county in real need.

We have power and TV and phone." Elsewhere in the county, local officials began to tally damage from Erin. Panhandle hit PANHANDLE, From 1A The governor and James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, planned to survey the damage by air today. "We thank God that this storm did not pack the catastrophic punch that others have in the past," Clinton said in a statement promising aid. Initial reports showed almost one-third of the homes in Navarre Beach sustained damage; there were reports that one or two beachfront houses on Pensacola Beach had been destroyed. Reports were sparse late Thursday from the hardest-hit region Florida's westernmost counties, Escambia, Santa Rosa and Okaloosa.

The Escambia County Sheriffs Department said 50 to 60 police cars would patrol the area overnight to guard against looting. As Erin moved west through Alabama after coming ashore in the Pensacola area, the storm's tail winds buffeted the Panhandle with torrential rains and heavy winds. The damage is "worse frankly than what I thought it was going to be," said Barry Evans, Escambia County's administrator and civil defense director. "One (county) commissioner said a tree down the street cut a car in half. One of my employees lost a room in his house from two trees.

From what I understand, that is going on all over the place." State insurance officials projected insured losses as high as $200 million from Erin's two-day swath through Florida, a fraction of the $16 billion in insured losses during Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Emergency officials complained loudly that Panhandle residents were caught by surprise because forecasts Wednesday predicted Erin would move right past them and hit Gulfport, or New Orleans. "It was Gulfport Gulfport, Gulf-port all last night then all of a sudden: 'It's said Susan How Much Does Bamett Want Your Small Business Banking? Just Ask. We Have More Than 140, 000 Stories To Tell Ask a Barnett small business customer. You'll hear that our commitment to earn your banking is more than words.

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