Ruth Rodriguez and her husband are busy sweeping the muddy waters off of their kitchen tile and out the front door. Their white cabinets and white refrigerator have dirty watermarks about a foot up from the floor.
"Esto era un rio… rio. Todo dañado... todo," said Rodriguez in Spanish.
This was a river, she said, and everything was damaged.
Residents living in Hillsborough County's primarily Hispanic neighborhood of Town 'n' Country have been cleaning up after historic flooding from Hurricane Helene. The storm swept through Thursday night, pushing 7 feet of storm surge through the streets and into their homes.
Town 'n' Country Boulevard
Rodriguez has lived in her home on Town 'n’ Country Boulevard off of Hillsborough Avenue for 30 years. She said she’s never seen flooding like this here.
"Primera vez... nunca,” she said.
Law enforcement had to use boats to get rescue people in distress Thursday night into Friday morning.
"We were able to get them to the people that needed us the most. And Town 'n' Country was definitely a big part of that,” said Danny Alvarez, the public information officer for Hillsborough County Fire Rescue.
He said Town 'n' Country, Ruskin and Apollo Beach were the parts of the county most impacted — and they were under mandatory evacuation orders.
Over 300 calls were made to 911 from those areas Thursday night into Friday morning, and over 500 storm victims were rescued between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.
"We had two separate families that had to seek refuge on their roofs because the inside of their homes are obviously flooded to the point that they were fearing for their lives,” Alvarez said.
Both families were rescued.
Running to higher ground
Saul Maran, who’s lived on Town 'n' Country Boulevard for 15 years, started to see water creep up to his home around 1 a.m.
“We started making moves to leave the area. Even though it was a very quick flooding situation, we grabbed the essentials… the family, the pets, my baby, and we headed out of here,” Maran said.
He was able to get through the flood waters driving his jeep.
“But a lot of people didn't have the opportunity,” he said.
“This has never been seen to this level. We have seen the water creep to the street and the street flooded, but never come to the houses," he added. "So, this was very, very intense…. they had told us to evacuate or to head out a bit sooner, but this caught a lot of people by surprise.”
Maran said he saw a lot of “chaos” but also witnessed unity.
“A lot of people coming together and helping each other out… communicating, especially to our community,” he said.
Maran said he was able to help translate between the sheriff’s office and his Spanish-speaking neighbors.
Alexis Rivera also helped others escape the rising water by letting eight people and three pets jump onto the back of his pickup to get to higher ground.
Around 2:30 am Friday, when Rivera awoke to the sound of boats riding down the street just outside of his house, which is across from Ruth Rodriguez's.
In the darkness of night, Rivera witnessed local emergency operators rescuing his nearby neighbors from the flood waters.
"I came out here, stood on top of my truck for a little bit to see what was happening. But it kept coming and rising and rising and rising, so I grabbed the whole family and our pets and took off," Rivera said.
Rivera said the same as Maran — even though there were mandatory evacuation orders in place for this area, the neighborhood was caught by surprise.
Climate change
Danny Alvarez of Hillsborough’s fire rescue team said that in addition to the historic storm surge, there were a few other reasons behind the flooding.
"You can look at drainage issues in the past,” Alvarez said. “We were already pretty saturated with rain and water, that it's just an overwhelming amount of water being dumped in one area, and our systems just aren't able to handle that."
Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher for the University of Miami, said it also has to do with the onshore winds blowing from west to east at the tail end of Helene.
"That's when the water starts getting bulldozed onto land,” McNoldy said.
And then, of course, there’s sea level rise. It’s caused by the combination of melted glaciers and ice sheets and the thermal expansion of seawater as it warms. The waters are warming because of human-induced fossil fuel pollution, which traps heat into the atmosphere.
Over the past 30 years, the waters surrounding the Tampa area have gone up about 6.9 inches.
"Sea level rise definitely does play a role in how much flooding a hurricane can create through with its storm surge, because you're adding that storm surge onto an increasing baseline,” McNoldy said.
That helps to partially explain why people like Saul Maran, Alexis Rivera, and Ruth Rodriguez witnessed this kind of surge for the first time on their home street.
But that's not the worst of it for Rodriguez — she just recently canceled her home insurance because it was too expensive.
When asked what's going to happen now, Rodriguez said, "Lo que papa Dios quiera."
It's up to God, she said.
