Storm chaser Aaron Jayjack reports a messy cleanup ahead for Punta Gorda, Florida, after Hurricane Milton brought high winds, storm surge and flooding. The city streets are covered in mud and debris.
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00:00we've kind of a lot of the water is receded you can see we're just in this
00:03sludge sludge everywhere this mud is everywhere left over from the storm
00:08surge last night water still flowing in fact you can see they're starting to
00:12come through right now try and clear some of this this mud and stuff out the
00:15debris trying to push it into the sewer system but if you come over here you can
00:19see these steps here where we are standing here at this business now this
00:24is about five feet and four plus maybe a little more than five feet off of the
00:28ground here where we're at on the sidewalk maybe down another six inches
00:32down to the street level and we're probably five to six feet above sea
00:37level at this location so you can see that we probably had around that 10 foot
00:41of surge maybe more here in Punta Gorda just like as I mentioned there is mud
00:46everywhere this is what they're dealing with now in Punta Gorda Florida quite a
00:52difficult situation to deal with cleanups going to take some time you
00:56know probably be helpful of a nice rainstorm came through here in the next
01:00few days to try and help wash some of this mud out but besides the mud lots of
01:03tree debris here through here we saw some street signs down as well and one
01:08weird thing we haven't had a chance to go look at yet we're probably gonna make
01:11our way next is the the homes that are off to the to the southwest of our
01:14location here some residential homes that just got done dealing with the
01:19surge problems from Hurricane Helene two weeks ago in fact they still had piles of
01:23debris out in front of their homes and now here we are yet again another major
01:27hurricane causing significant storm surge here in Punta Gorda Florida and
01:33you have been dealing with people out and about I'm sure this morning or maybe
01:37trying to start to come out what has been their reaction to all this yeah you
01:46know we've we stayed in this hotel here where a lot of the residents that are in
01:50the homes here to the southwest retreated to to stay to get you know a
01:53higher ground because it is slightly higher ground here and they're all
01:57coming out you know some of the cars that were in the parking lot were
01:59actually underwater last night as a storm surge came in so you know there's
02:04see some some disappointed looks on folks faces people kind of just walking
02:08around you know trying to just assess the scene for themselves I think there
02:11some people kind of kind of shocked to see how much mud and whatnot has been
02:15left in place behind all the storm surge but you know there people are
02:20there's lots of traffic moving now traffic's moving around I think the
02:23water is receded enough at least for the majority of the town here that people
02:27can start moving around they can start bringing in help bring in emergency
02:31personnel to help clear out some of the stuff see if anybody needs rescues but I
02:35think for the most part you know they're probably people are probably okay here
02:40they're probably not any life life-threatening situations here put the
02:45Gorda fortunately we did have some strong wind but the main event here for
02:49this hurricane was definitely that big-time storm surge event that came
02:53rushing in here like a like a wall of water