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Highlands Today

Water, Water Everywhere

Kathy Waters/Highlands Today

Freddie Wynn shows the damage caused by a tree that fell on his roof during Tropical Storm Fay at Kissimmee River Estates on Wednesday.

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By BILL RETTEW JR.

Highlands Today

Published: August 21, 2008

LAKE PLACID - Flood water isolated Paul Algor at his Leisure Lakes home Wednesday.

Algor estimated that a quarter-acre portion of his five-acre plot of land was surrounded by water.

Lucky for him, his house sat on that quarter acre, and above the waters, on a man-made mound. Unfortunately, storm water reached the dashboard of Algor's pickup truck, which was parked in its usual spot near his home.

"I've got plenty of food and beer - Milwaukee's Best Light," said Algor, when contacted by cell phone. "I've got some island property. I can sell it, if I sell it quick."

Tropical Storm Fay hit the southern portion of Highlands County hardest.

From Leisure Lakes on Lake June, eastward to the Okeechobee County line, every retention basin, ditch and low spot was brimming with flood waters.

Dozens of five-acre (and much larger) "ponds" lined State Road 70 for more than 15 miles, where just two days earlier cattle had grazed on open range land.

Flooding waters breached and closed several roadways, with many motorists chancing navigation across open water.

Freddie Wynn, of Broadland Lane and Maple Avenue in Kissimmee River Estates, watched a pair of workers with chainsaws on Wednesday remove what had been a pine tree, located on neighbors property, about 40 feet from his trailer.

A blue tarp covered a manhole-sized gash, almost directly above where Wynn sat in a chair, with his dog "Jeanie Weenie" in his lap, at about 4:45 p.m., on Tuesday.

"It sounded like thunder," said Wynn, while pointing to the spot where the tree had rested, just three feet from where his head had been. "When I turned and looked over my shoulder and (the tree) was there."

Wynn spent a sleepless night collecting five or six tub loads of rain water that fell through the new opening in the roof. Wynn said the tropical storm caused more damage to his home than he suffered during the entire 2004 hurricane season.

There were no reported injuries to Wynn, Jeanie Weenie or any other residents of the trailer park, late Wednesday.

A couple of blocks away, and also on Broadland Avenue, neighbors Pam McGill and Bill Hatfield talked from opposite sides of a fence that separated their properties.

They surveyed a large portion of a large downed tree and several branches that winds had displaced.

McGill weathered the storm at home with her 17-year-old daughter Amanda.

"We heard a lot of stuff," said McGill. "Wind was hitting the trailer, which sounded like rocks hitting the windows. It rocked the trailer. It moved the trailer.

"My daughter asked a normal question, and I said that I didn't know what was hitting the trailer," said McGill.

Bill Rettew Jr. may be contacted at 386-5857 or wrettew@highlandstoday.com

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