Historic Brevard County flooding: One week later

That's what happened now. It's been a week now since those historic rains pounded our area. In fact, one week ago this morning that those torrential rains overwhelmed storm drains and turned major intersections into rivers. Cars were trapped in southern Brevard County. This was absolutely heartbreaking for so many people. Their cars were flooded, stranded in those floodwaters and sadly two people lost their lives. And so today many neighbors are still picking up the pieces. Fox 35's Marlee Capper live in Palm Bay this morning. And Marlee, you know, I know the damage is still fairly. extensive there and I know that people are already putting their stuff out to be taken away just a continued effort to get back to some sense of normalcy. Good morning. You know, it's been a week since the historic flooding, but people are truly still picking up the pieces. We are here at the Thomases, and they had videos of their home go viral on social media. I mean, so many people were watching all of the damage. This is their fence that's right here, and I'm actually about to step on top of their deck. So if you can believe me, this deck was way over here, and it got washed away. I would love to introduce you to Ms. Charlene Thomas How are you doing today? I am doing okay today. Oh my gosh. I feel my heart just really goes out to you guys because there's so much damage that's here. You have a beautiful home and you just moved in in April from Louisiana. So tell me a little bit about your story. Were you guys prepared? I mean, I don't think anybody was really prepared for this flooding. We were not prepared for this flooding at all. It's impossible to prepare for something like this. A hundred percent. I mean, what is going through your mind as we kind of walk through your home? And maybe recap for us what it was like when all of this happened. Going through my mind is what do we do next? And the recap is, within three hours of watching it last Monday morning, we had 40 inches of water in our house. We couldn't move stuff fast enough. It reached the point that we were in survival mode. We started moving things in the attic. I have six cats. We quickly had to get them in the attic as the bed they were on was getting soaked. Wow. Okay, let's take a step inside here, you guys. I'll let Orlando go first. The floors are obviously just destroyed, mud, dirt, everywhere. The highest point that the flood water got in your house was, you said, 50 inches? Just shy of 50 inches, correct. Oh, I can't even fathom that, you guys. That's probably more than my waist. Okay. Okay. So obviously you guys had flood insurance, which praise God. What have they told you? Have they said anything to you yet? The flood adjuster is coming out for the first time today. Okay. For the last week we've been on our own, scrambling. Oh my gosh, okay. And I want us to make our way around to the living room here up front. Thank you very much. That's where you can really see the water line if we want to turn the corner here. It is a sunken living room, so that of course doesn't really help, but it's right here. And I want to point out, this is my waist. So that's, and I'm 5'8". So that's how tall this is, it goes up to right here. Man, okay, flood insurance, as you know, doesn't cover everything. So what, in your guys' mind, are you prepared to do? Like, re-gut and do the whole house? What are you thinking? The whole house needs to be re-gutted from at least eight feet down, based on the water that came through here. All of the kitchen needs to be torn out. All the bathrooms need to be torn out. All the flooring needs to be torn out. Um, we have flood coverage for dwelling, but we don't have it for contents. Um, so the rest of the furniture and everything like that will be coming out of our own pocket now. Wow. Wow. Has this been an emotional process for you? I don't believe it's hit us fully yet. Every day we're waking up exhausted mentally and we're. Spending our time thinking, okay, what do I need to do now? We lost all three vehicles as well. So we're scrambling to get trucks, you know, to replace them so we're not having to rent every single day. We're in an Airbnb right now. So we're going from week to week deciding on where we're living. Wow. Your husband, Justin, said you guys are thinking of getting a trailer to live on property? That would be that, yes. That's our plan right now is to get an RV just to live on site because at this point, the cost-wise, doing an apartment or temporary housing, it's insane. We're still paying all the utilities and mortgage payment here. It's a lot. Charlene, I'm so sorry that you guys are going through this. Oh, gosh, you guys. This is just one example just of the damage that we're seeing here across Brevard County, Palm Bay. We're in the Turkey Creek area. And, yeah, I mean, oh, the floor is just destroyed. The water line is crazy just when you see that and you think about how high this must have been. Thank you so much for letting us in your home. I'm so sorry that you're going through this. Thank you for coming out. I saw online you have a GoFundMe. I do, and for anybody who wants to see, I have a Facebook with all my videos are live, and they're public. If you really want to see what the real action was, I did Facebook Live to show the floodwaters coming in. The videos are absolutely insane. Well, we're going to step out. Thank you so much for having us. We're making a mess in here, and I'm so sorry. We're going to send these back to you guys for now, but we're going to come back and check in on some of the other neighbors and just the other damage in this area, because it's pretty extensive, you guys. Marlee, it's heartbreaking to look at this. Can I ask you a question to ask Charlotte? Colleen, what is happening when it comes to getting to work? Are their bosses letting them off work at this time? How does that happen right now? Yeah. So our anchors want to know what you guys are doing about working. Are your bosses like lenient? What's going on with that? We both work for L3Harris and they have been an amazing company and they're being supportive and letting us both work from home as we need to be. I'm taking some PTO if, you know, we're really out of pocket, but both of the company has been hands down amazing and we couldn't have been more appreciative to our teams that we're on. Okay. There we go. We're grateful for good bosses because I mean, there's no way that you could simply, I mean, you don't even have a car to get to work. Correct. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So many people, of course, in that region, you know, working on the Space Coast, L3Harris is a great, a great tech company and God bless them for giving them the time they need. That's good. Good to hear that. Thanks, Marley. Welcome back into Fox Orlando Live. I'm Hayden Wiggs. Thanks so much for joining us. We have a lot on our docket today, a lot of live events that we're going to be bringing to you right here on Fox Orlando Live. But first, a story that we have been covering for you right here pretty much all this week, and that is going to be the devastating floodwaters that are taking over central and coastal Florida. Again, this happening in the St. Johns River Valley area, impacting communities across our state. And joining us live to talk about this is Marlee Capper, who is down there And they're in Palm Bay, Marley, what are you seeing out there today? Today on this Monday. Hayden, good morning. Well, it's been a week since I was out here as one of the first crews for Fox 35 to be here in Brevard County for these historic floods. And so now people are quite literally still picking up the pieces. I want to point out we are in Turkey Creek and a neighborhood and pretty much every other house looks just like this. All of their furniture, all of the things from their homes gutted and in their front yards. I'm here at Miss Mitzi Norman's house. She said that the water got so bad that FWC had a mandatory The water was so high that they used her top of the roof right there to hold on and stabilize the boat so that they could rescue her. She was upstairs on her second story in her home, and that's where they were before they had to be rescued. Now, she has a dumpster in front of her yard. This is her third one. She says she's waiting for crews to come grab this one and bring her. Another one, because they have a ton of stuff that they need to get rid of. I want to introduce you to Miss Mitzi, and I want to come inside here. Mitzi, can I sneak you away? Can I sneak you? Awesome. Her crews are working really hard to obviously kind of put things back together. First of all, let's talk about the car. The car is totaled. Is that right? And the truck. And the truck. Yeah, 9:30 on Saturday, they towed the truck. Wow. And they can't tow this because this is here. Okay. Okay. Let's walk inside and let's point out the water line. Excuse us. So sorry. Thank you. This is the water line of where the water got just to the car. But we know that it was way worse in the back. So let's kind of come through the house here. Her crews have been working nonstop to gut the house. So right over here to my left was her laundry room. This, where I'm standing now, was her dining room. And then if we kind of peer inside over here, this was. Now, I know the fans are pretty loud, but Mitzi, can you just tell everybody how you're feeling? I can't imagine what you've been going through. It's numbness, really, is where I'm at right now. We have a really good contractor who recommended a really good restoration company, and he's already lined up all of our subs. That's who you see here. It's the screen guy and the garage door guy and the air conditioning guy. I mean they're all working to get us back to Being an habitable place to live again. I'd like to go in the backyard if we can. Can we go outside? I want to show you guys where the water line went through. It got so high. Orlando, watch your step. Yeah. Mitzi, can you point out, Mitzi, where the water line is back there on the screen? Because this was just so crazy to me. I want to show you guys how high the water got here at their house. The water line right here. If you can see it on the screen door, that's how high the water came. Can you guys see that? Because I'm 5'8", so this is over six feet of water where it came up from the lake back here and in the house. When you look at that line, what goes through your mind? Crazy. I mean, it was so fast. 8:30, there was nothing. 12 o'clock, we were under complete water. 1 o'clock, the airboats were taking us away. I mean, it came so fast. You had no time to prepare. We were just flabbergasted, I mean. And can you tell everybody, you've been here for a while, you've been through all the major named hurricanes. How does this compare? Oh, this is a gazillion times worse. We were here in 04 for the Ivan, Jean, Charlie, Francis hurricane and we lost our screen enclosure in that one. And in 08 when we had they. We had water on the stairs of our patio, but it never got in the house. This came up so fast. I mean, our wooden sofa table was just, you know, all of a sudden coming up, coming up and crashing over. You know, I mean, everything was flooding and floating everywhere in the whole house. And it came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere. Wow. I mean, we had a lot of rain, but. Yeah, this is crazy. We had to boat. Yeah. The boat's been saved. The boat's been saved. Was it floating, I'm assuming? It was actually started to float down the creek, and I yelled at my husband, and he jumped on board real quick and got it started, and we backed it up, and we put the lift as high as it would go, and that's where she sits. Okay, okay, and I want to point out, you guys found a few things, you know. The good news is that you and your family is okay. Your lives are more important than stuff, is what we were talking about earlier. But this has you a little emotional, so can you maybe tell me a little bit about this? This is the Stoniger family Bible. The family's originally from West Virginia. We're trying to dry it out some, but all the articles from all of the people, the one thing we did find was his grandmother had hand-crocheted a cross bookmarker. So we're working on trying to get this dried out. But yeah, this was one of the hardest things to lose. And our wedding album went floating away. Mincy, how long have y'all been married? 34 years. Oh, Mincy, I'm so sorry that you guys are going through this. I'm truly so heartbroken for this community. Two doors down, you have some new neighbors, the Thomases. They moved from Louisiana in April, and they have to completely re-gut their homes. So I don't think people quite grasp, like, the severity of this damage and how bad this was. Now, we went down a bunch of stairs to get to that screen door, but here's the line for the... I don't know if you can see it. That's to my chest, almost. That's the house. The whole house was this deep. With the second story, is it okay? Second story's fine. Air conditioner's running, our clothing is all good, our linens, our bedding, our bedroom set, so we have that second story. Unfortunately, our neighbors, you know, lots of them with one-story homes lost everything. Thank you so much for letting us come into your home. The fans are kind of crazy loud in there, but just to show you guys one more time, it's been gutted. Thank God they've been able to have some great crews come down here, Hayden, and get this rocking and rolling for them. My welcome fall sign survived. Yes, her welcome fall sign survived. So, you know, there's a few... Good things that came out of this as far as what's been able to be recovered, but we're standing in an empty house. It looks like a new build, and this is the reality of this storm, so we're praying for everybody, and we're just really thankful for all the crews that are working so hard to get things together, but we'll send these back to you guys. Thank you, Marlee. Just great visuals there, and we're all thinking of these families that are going through this there in Palm Bay, so thank you for showing us the reality of this situation, but the fact that these families still are having some hope there, it's a good thing to see. Thank you, Marlee.