Rain takes a toll

Horror stories about inundated streets and homes poured in from all over Volusia and Flagler counties Thursday as emergency officials scurried to help stranded residents cope with days of relentless rain running up damage estimates of more than $5 million.

And it looks like the wet situation residents currently find themselves in isn't going to improve until Saturday afternoon when "things will begin to calm down," according to the National Weather Service in Melbourne.

The reason the torrential downpours have not let up, meterologist Matt Bragaw said, is because a high-pressure system that's stalled over the Eastern Seaboard, between Florida and Virginia, is blocking the storm center that's off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

"It's not allowing the storm center to move," Bragaw said. "If not, the storm center would have gone through already."

DAMAGED HOMES IN 100s

The flooding was so dire in Daytona Beach -- with 420 structures reported by officials to be substantially damaged -- that police were hoping to acquire a flat-bottom boat in case they had an emergency in the Fairway Estates subdivision off Beville Road, Police Chief Mike Chitwood said. Several streets in the city were almost waist-deep by noon Thursday.

From Ormond Beach to New Smyrna Beach, residents used any means available to bail out the water and save their valuables.

New Smyrna Beach officials said a dozen homes and 73 streets in the city were flooded.

"I had about a foot of water in my house last night," said New Smyrna Beach resident Frank Dalton, who lives on Columbus Avenue.

Dalton's was one of about two dozen homes in a four-block stretch just west of South Atlantic Avenue, south of Flagler Avenue, to be affected by the deluge, which dropped more than 5 inches of rain on the community overnight Wednesday.

In Ormond Beach, where 24.8 inches of rain have fallen since Monday, firefighters assisted five homeowners who were waterlogged on Laurel Oaks Circle and Lake Park Circle, police Sgt. Kenny Hayes said.

DESPERATE CONDITIONS

And in Daytona Beach, homeowners and apartment dwellers waded in almost waist-deep water as they too tried to salvage their belongings along Caroline, Keech and Jean streets, police said.

Some desperate residents even removed manhole covers to redirect the water into the sewer system, city spokeswoman Susan Cerbone said. But that's not a solution because it funnels rainwater back into the homeowners' sewer system and causes a hazard for motorists, Cerbone said.

ASSESSING THE DAMAGE

The storm prompted the Volusia County Council to declare a state of emergency Thursday afternoon, and this morning, U.S. Reps. John L. Mica, R- Winter Park, and Suzanne Kosmas, D-New Smyrna Beach, plan to visit storm-damaged areas. Both will push for federal assistance wherever possible, according to statements issued Thursday.

The assistance will be sorely needed for residents, and potato farmers are hard hit in Flagler County.

Crops are in the middle of harvest season and many of the fields are under several feet of water. According to Flagler County spokesman Carl Laundrie, the damage estimate for potato crops in Flagler, Putnam and St. Johns counties is about $45 million.

Historic rainfall amounts have been recorded in parts of Volusia and Flagler counties since Sunday, when heavy rain began pelting the area. Port Orange officials had recorded 22 inches between Monday and 9 a.m. Thursday; and downtown Bunnell in Flagler County reported 27.5 inches, the highest total so far. New Smyrna Beach reported 16.4 inches Thursday morning.

With record rainfall amounts -- 17.5 inches at Daytona Beach International Airport -- and more downpours expected for the rest of today, officials with Volusia's property appraiser's office were still crunching damage numbers Thursday night.

A preliminary estimate of $4.8 million was released by county officials. However, Daytona Beach spokeswoman Susan Cerbone said there was more than $8 million in damage in her city.

Property Appraiser Morgan Gilreath said an estimate of total damage is expected to be released by mid-morning today.

Flooding across Volusia was so severe that 250 houses could not be reached by emergency officials or police. But many of the residents were reached by telephone.

Thursday's flooding consumed roads in Holly Hill and Ormond Beach.

Across the street from EVAC's headquarters on Mason Avenue, a dry cleaning business posted a "'No Wake Zone"' sign and attached an inner tube to it to gauge whether motorists were driving too fast.

On State Avenue, meanwhile, Sean Hughes said his home had been flooding since Tuesday. He's seen schools of fish in his driveway, he said, slinging a sandbag onto the back of his truck Thursday morning.

Some Holly Hill residents couldn't flush their toilets because the water flooded some areas of the city's stormwater and sewer systems.

In Port Orange, for the first time in memory, city officials shut down Dunlawton Avenue in both directions because of standing water.

"It's sheer volume of water," City Manager Ken Parker said. "The system is really not having an opportunity to catch up. We're running all the pumps."

In the Cambridge Basin area, where the city completed $12 million in drainage improvements and used $7.5 million in federal money to buy and demolish 21 homes after flooding during the 2004 hurricanes, some residents complained about water collecting on their streets.

A retaining wall next to a canal that was part of the drainage improvements to the Cambridge Basin showed signs of buckling and would likely need repairs, Parker said later Thursday.

"The flooding was worse than it ever was," Central Park Boulevard resident Marie Hodges said Wednesday. "The taxpayers of Port Orange are paying all this money and this is what we got. It's worse than it ever was."

To our readers

News-Journal carriers made every effort Thursday morning to deliver papers to all subscribers, but flooded or blocked roads prevented delivery to about 6,000 customers. Carriers hope to deliver Thursday's paper to those customers along with today's Daytona Beach News-Journal.

lyda.longa@news-jrnl.com

-- Staff Writers James Miller, Patricio G. Balona, Mark I. Johnson, John Bozzo, Heather Scofield, Eileen Zaffiro and Kari Cobham contributed to this report.