AccuWeather's Leslie Hudson spoke with officer Bryan Craig who shares the level of devastation left by Hurricane Milton's flooding, which was increased by storm surge and tide conditions.
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00:00We have been out with South Daytona Police Department for a good portion of the last hour or so.
00:05They're doing their first initial assessments here in Volusian County because the winds have just gone down just enough so they can safely get out.
00:12And we're going to talk to the public information officer in a second.
00:15I wanted to show you that video, though, that I was able to feed into you while we were out with them.
00:20That was in South Daytona.
00:21There was a gentleman that was walking out of a flooded neighborhood with his dog, his dog Roxy.
00:27And he was, of course, not too happy, upset that he had to leave his home.
00:32We have seen substantial flooding here in Volusian County.
00:35We do think, according to the police department here, they think it is worse than Hurricane Ian.
00:40So we have Brian Craig with us, again, the public information officer with South Daytona, and he's going to talk to us about that.
00:47So, Craig, we've been driving around.
00:48You're looking at all the areas that are prone to flooding.
00:52This is Riverview Park.
00:55Okay, so talk to me a little bit about what you've seen this morning and how you're comparing this to Hurricane Ian.
00:59Yeah, so, obviously, upon our initial assessment, based on the previous Hurricane Ian situation and flooding,
01:06I believe that this is going to be a little bit more substantial.
01:09I think the biggest issue we're running into right now, too, is the flood and the storm surge and also the tide conditions.
01:15When you have that all combined, you have a pretty serious problem here.
01:19So the biggest thing that we can tell people is to stay inside and try to avoid these flooded roads as much as possible.
01:26And also the vehicles. The vehicles are causing some issues. Try to drive through some of these flooded roads.
01:30And you were also telling me that your actual responders and rescuers can't even get out of their houses, and they typically don't flood.
01:38Talk to me about that, because they can't even get out to help you guys because they're flooded in their homes.
01:42Yeah, so that was a different component that we were facing right now, too, is we can't even get our own first responders here to help out
01:48or even our public works personnel here to start cutting down trees and getting into some of these areas where we can start rescuing people.
01:53So it's a different component we're dealing with.
01:55So what we're doing now is we're using some of these high water vehicle rescues,
01:59and we're trying to get some more people into work so that we can start using them to start making some rescues.
02:04This unbelievable situation here, you guys.
02:06You know, this is all they're just now getting their assessments here in Volusia County.
02:10Still very windy here. We're going to continue to be on the road with them, check things out.
02:13We'll send more to you and have more throughout this morning.
02:15Now we're reporting live in South Daytona. I'm Leslie Hudson back to you.