FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – After crews in high-water vehicles saw a busy Thursday of rescues in flood-ravaged Fort Lauderdale neighborhoods following Wednesday night’s storms, Friday proved to be a much slower day.
While calls still came in, officials with Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue characterized them more as “calls for assistance” rather than rescues.
Into Thursday, crews in Broward had responded to more than 1,000 calls for service and 600 rescues.
Many rescues happened in Fort Lauderdale’s Edgewood neighborhood, located just north of the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
Daniel Anderson said Friday he was one of the many who chose not to leave his mobile home in the Lauder Lakes community east of Interstate 95, but overnight, that decision changed when the conditions inside his already-flooded home began to deteriorate.
“It was like overflowing; there was just water in my whole house,” Anderson said. “The smell of the mildew — I had to get out of there.”
While the water levels slowly subsided and some residents found themselves searching for shelter, others were left cleaning the water out of their homes and trying to salvage whatever property wasn’t destroyed.
“90% of what we have in this house is going to be gone,” Edgewood resident Sandor Resko said. “We literally have to start from scratch.”
Crews helped 40 families get to Holiday Park, where officials set up a shelter for flood victims.