By Drew Dixon
Shorelines Staff Writer
Beaches streets swelled with flooding for the few hours on either side of high tide at about 12:45 p.m. Friday as Fay lashed the coastline for a third straight day.
The worst flooding was in Jacksonville Beach where streets were swollen with water between the shoreline west to Third Street. Motorists had to plow through water that was often almost a foot deep and traffic was at a crawl for hours. Many streets between First and Second streets were blocked by police who used yellow police tape to prevent access to the roadways near the ocean.
“The police were using the tape to warn drivers to not go through,” said Sgt. Thomas Bingham, Jacksonville Beach police spokesman. “The tape might still be up but we’ll try to get it down. We couldn’t put up barricades.”
There was no unique area of flooding in Jacksonville Beach. Bingham said it was widespread near the coast. “Everywhere from First Street to Third Street, down [south] to the county line.”
In Neptune Beach and Atlantic Beach, flooding was limited, but was most noticeable on Atlantic Boulevard running through the Town Center commercial district.
“That’s one of the locations that we expected,” said Atlantic Beach Police Chief David Thompson. “We knew we’d have some [flooding] there in Town Center. I don’t think it got into any buildings, but it certainly covered the road."
Beyond the spotty street flooding, both Thompson and Bingham said the Beaches have come through “relatively good” in the third day of dealing with Fay. Both also said they expect much of the flooding to subside as the tides recede and rains from the tropical storm ease.
“The water levels are pretty high in the lagoons and the ponds right now. But we shouldn’t have any flooding in any homes or buildings,” Thompson said.
Atlantic Beach appears to be the area with the greatest beach erosion due to heavy surf from Fay, Thompson said. It will take some time to finish an assessment, but he expects erosion to be significant.
“The biggest area of damage, if you want to call it that, is going to be beach erosion. We’ll look at it over the next few days and figure out how much beach erosion we got,” Thompson said.
Residents seemed to heed orders by all Beaches law enforcement that the beaches were closed today and there were no reported rescues of any swimmers going into the rough surf, such as Thursday when a 21-year-old woman drowned.
She died when she and two men went into the water about 12:30 p.m. Thursday at the Atlantic Boulevard beach access in Neptune Beach.
Neptune Beach Police Chief David Sembach Friday identified the woman as Rachel Ann Reed of Valparaiso, Ind. Her two companions in the water were 24-year-old Christopher Colella and 20-year-old Adam Colella, both of Crown Point, Ind. The men were not injured.
Witnesses said the three went into the ocean and quickly became overwhelmed in waist-deep water. The woman was seen unconscious in the water as one of the men was able to make it back to shore on his own power and the other man had to be helped out by witnesses.
