MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — Manatee County has continuously seen heavy bands of rain since Tuesday. And since Tropical Storm Debby brought devastating flooding to the area earlier in the month, the ground remains saturated.
On Wednesday evening, residents downstream from Lake Manatee Dam heard the sirens and flooding quickly followed. Some took to Facebook to share what they were seeing and some shared the alert they had received from the county.
Manatee County officials responded with their own Facebook post letting residents know they were trying to manage water levels at the dam and were aware of the flooding.
"It is important to note that the dam was neither designed nor functions as a flood control structure," the post said. "At this time, the county continues to monitor flow rates and the potential for additional rainfall and will notify those downstream accordingly."
Lindsay Ryan was doing her evening chores on her property off of Waterline Road when it started raining on Wednesday night. She heard the dam siren not long after.
"It didn’t alarm me until I realized very quickly that the water started to drastically rise," Ryan said. "It went from this to everything you see, up to my boots in this driveway was flooded, all of my pastures were flooded.”
Within 15 to 20 minutes, Ryan said water came within two feet of her barn. Inside, she had gathered her animals — five miniature horse, one miniature donkey and six miniature goats. The pastures they normally roam were underwater.
Ryan waded in about three feet of water to get to her chicken coop.
“It flooded within 10-15 minutes, so they weren’t prepared for it, and they were all panicking at the bottom of the coop," she said.
Ryan had to pickup up each chicken and put them on their perches up high. And back at the barn, she worried about how quickly the water rose as she waited.
“At that point, God forbid the barn had started to flood, I had no way to get my animals out. There was not enough time," she said.
During the Manatee County Board of Commissioners land use meeting on Thursday morning, the commission voted to extend the local state of emergency for Debby. Deputy County Administrator Evan Pilachowski also briefed the commission on the latest update on the dam and local flooding.
“The dam and Lake Manatee continue to function as designed. They are structurally sound. There’s no sort of risk of any breach of the dam," he said.
Pilachowski also explained that dam was at its capacity and was designed to help control flooding.
"So, the flow into the lake and out of the lake are equal. It is just a situation where we have no ability to store any additional water in Lake Manatee.”
