SARASOTA, Fla. (WFTS — In the Laurel Meadows neighborhood, homes and cars are still underwater for the fifth day in a row.
"Is this what your house normally looks like?" ABC Action News reporter Jada Williams asked resident Kim Gregory.
"Heck no," Gregory answered. "I laugh, but it's like a laugh, borderline cry. There's never water here, ever. This is not water."
Kim Gregory and her neighbors never thought their neighborhood would flood so terribly.
"Honestly, I feel like walking away from the whole thing and handing it to the mortgage company. I don't even know where to begin. Almost all of my neighbors don't have flood insurance. This is not a flooded area," she said.
But now, there's unimaginable damage from the flooding. There's even bubbling sewage directly behind her backyard.
"It came in from all the rain that we had. The lakes obviously rise in the neighborhood, and this is a catch basin for them. But what's the bigger issue is this sewer hole, man hole right here, that's directly behind my house, that's bubbling sewage water. And I literally watched that on Monday fill my backyard," she said.
The only way into the Laurel Meadows neighborhood all these days later is a boat or neighbors taking out their personal Humvees and vehicles to give fellow neighbors a peek of the damage.
"You put your life into your home. My husband and I did every room. You spend months just picking out the right things, and you take years accumulate this stuff, and it's gone, just gone so and nobody's owning up," said Kelsey Blanton.
With deep standing water blocking her from home, she clung to important memories, a framed picture with the signatures of every guest at her wedding.
"Did you ever think you would be in a position where you're like, 'I need to grab what's important to me?'" we asked.
"Never. I never in my entire life," Blanton answered.
The neighbors want to know why the water level is so high so we took their concerns straight to Sarasota County Public Works Director Spencer Anderson.
"It's like trying to put more water in a full cup, it just doesn't go in. So that's part of the issue is there was a just a massive amount of runoff from the entire Phillippi Creek basin that all wanted to go to the same place at the same time, and it couldn't all get in," he explained.
But Laurel Meadows is in flood zone X; not a zone prone to flooding.
"This is a dry retention pond behind our house. And we're not in a flood zone. We don't have flood insurance," Blanton said.
The department is adamant that there was no pump failure at play here. Public utility staff were out working Thursday to further assess the damage.
Meantime, neighbors believe construction and county maintenance are to blame.
"Why don't we talk about The Artistry that's being built over there; and this pipe system they put out here recently that maybe they messed up," Gregory said. "I'm not really sure, I don't know, because they're not going to tell us the truth."
We also asked Anderson about the possibility that construction is to blame.
"Not an obvious contributing factor. It's a lot of rain. We design, in Sarasota County, we have a very stringent design regulation for storm water. It's for the 100-year event, which is 10 inches of rain at 24 hours. Places got 13 to 14 inches of rain in 24 hours. So it greatly exceeds our very high standard, and that's the major reason why we're seeing all the flooding in this area," he responded.
He adds that while not a flood zone, the neighborhood is a FEMA designated special flood hazard.
"Everything else is high, right on this ridge that we're kind of standing on, and it's lower back that way. So unlike other areas that can sheet flow to get out to major canals, everything has to go through this. It's like a straw in a bathtub, that everything comes through this area," he said.
But Gregory says that's news to her.
"I happen to be a realtor, and I happen to know that FEMA changed all their flood maps back in March, and a lot of homes that were not in flood zones are now considered flood zones. All the people that had that received letters from their mortgages, which we have a mortgage, because either the homeowner has to get their own flood insurance or the mortgage company would get it for them, and obviously that would be way more money. We received no such letter. In fact, my insurance agent double checked for me. We are still in flood zone X. We are not in a flood zone. There is no requirement for flood insurance. The county knew they did something. They did not notify us. They sent no one here to help us. The storm has passed. It's uncalled for. People have been out here, not that day, not on Monday. They may have been out here, but they didn't come out on Monday when all of us were calling for help and trying to get answers," she said.
As neighbors wait for the water to recede, they say they want more answers from their county, state, and federal government.
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