Over 100 Homes in Palm Coast Damaged by Wind; Woodlands a Flood Concern; Surge in Flagler Beach Was Limited

Last Updated: 2 p.m.

Flagler County and city officials are breathing a collective sigh of relief. Despite the worst rain event Palm Coast has known in its history, despite some floodwaters in Flagler Beach’s low-lying areas and severe winds during Hurricane Milton’s passage over the region, the number of homes that experienced water intrusion have been limited to “a handful,” according to Emergency Management Director Jonathan Lord.

The shelter at Rymfire Elementary is in the process of closing today, with a couple of dozen residents who had remained overnight. The curfew that was in effect the last two nights will be rescinded today. Flagler schools reopen Monday, as will Daytona State College. Stetson University will stay closed Monday.




FPL cut the number of customers without power by more than half overnight. There were more than 46,000 customers without power at nightfall Thursday. At daybreak, the number was down to 16,500, or 22 percent of the county’s electricity customers, though some neighborhoods, such as the area between the Hammock Dunes toll bridge and Palm Harbor golf course, had power through much of the the storm, but lost it Thursday morning. By 2 p.m., the number had fallen to 15,260, or 21 percent without power.

In Palm Coast, at least 100 houses have experienced some degree of wind damage, but Palm Coast Mayor David Alfin called most of that damage “cosmetic.”

Palm Coast Fire Chief Kyle Berryhill, the incident commander for the city during the emergency (with City Manager Lauren Johnston), said at 1:45 p.m. that the damage assessment was only half done, so additional homes will be added to the tally. That tally is a live database the city is compiling, and hoping to complete by this evening. One house sustained damage of up to 80 percent. Residents in that house had to evacuate. “We helped them evacuate in the middle of the hurricane,” Berryhill said. The remaining damage to homes falls in lesser extent of damages. 

Some roads remain closed, including especially Old Kings Road south of Oak Trails. But there are no significant reports of flooded homes in the city. Concerns that parts of the Woodlands would flood also receded as waters rose only so far, never crossing past driveways. The Woodlands are in a bowl adjacent to Graham Swamp, where a lot of water drains. But Berryhill said those concerns have not gone away. “We’re not out of the woods yet,” he said, referring specifically to Black Alder Drive.

The city has prepared mounds of sandbags for Woodlands residents who need them. Those waters may yet rise, because Graham Swamp is still filling. (A commenter here was reporting precisely that, nearing 1 p.m.)

“So it does cause some anxiety, but it is part of the system, and as long as that water does not get to your front door, then the system has operated very, very well,” Alfin said.

Palm Coast is asking residents to still conserve water, even though the system is slowly recovering, and to limit water usage only to essentials. The city is also asking residents not to place yard waste at the curb just yet. The city’s yard-waste contractor will be mobilized in the middle to late next week, by which time residents can place debris at curbside. Otherwise, the debris will interfere with drainage.

Damage reports from homeowners are still trickling in, and some more reports may be forthcoming from Flagler Beach’s lowest-lying areas–Lambert Avenue, Palm Drive, South Flagler Avenue. But on South Flagler, a few inches above the bank of the Intracoastal, water rose last night, reached into garages and a few homes, but then receded. City Commissioner Rick Belhumeur, who owns several properties along South Flagler Avenue–and suffered severe flood damages in previous hurricanes–said he got 4 to 5 inches in his garage. “The water never got to the barricades at my other houses,” he said this morning. “Some other people with lower houses got water inside their homes but not near as deep as Ian.”




Ian flooded large swaths of the barrier island in 2022, as had Irma in 2017. Irma affected 400 homes. The National Weather Service has predicted a storm surge of 3 to 5 feet. “I’m thinking we got the three, not the five, which I’m okay with,” Lord said.

“We’re only directly aware of less than a handful, less than seven at this point,” Lord said of flooded homes. “At the end of the day though, if someone’s insured, they take care of it, they don’t have to report it to us. It’s not a requirement. But we are aware of three in Palm Coast and two somewhere else, five or  seven” total, so far.

Palm Coast’s stormwater system, frequently criticized by residents over the past year or two, performed remarkably well despite 16 inches in a 24-hour period at the height of the storm, in addition to several inches before that peak.

“It does work as designed,” Lord said of Palm Coast’s stormwater system. “A lot of people don’t realize that the street is part of the stormwater system, and it is okay to have 3, 4, 5 feet of water in the street, and that’s how the system is designed. The street allows that to happen. Is it inconvenient? 100 percent. But that’s the design in the ITT section on Palm Coast. And as long as [water] doesn’t enter the home, then it functions. If it enters the home, then it didn’t function.”




It didn’t enter into homes, with three exceptions so far. Wind damage is a slightly different story. “We’re up to 57 homes that we have identified that have some level of damage as a result of the storm, although many of them are what we would call cosmetic or minimal damage,” Alfin said. “A few tiles here and there, perhaps some storm debris in the yard, but nothing structural. We haven’t really identified any serious structural issues with homes that would make them unsafe.” He said the “rainbow has not quite risen yet,” with a lot of work ahead.

This morning Alfin and city administrators visited with public works and stormwater crews, who will also be treated to a meal this evening.

There has also been wind damage to homes in Flagler Beach and on the west side of the county, where the concern remains that Crescent Lake and Dead Lake’s waters will keep rising, as they have. The county is prepared to reopen a shelter if west-side residents are flooded out, Lord said. “We’re watching that. There’s no way to stop it, there’s nothing in our tool chest that we can do to stop it.” County emergency officials will also set up a station on the west side of the county today to distribute drinking water, because electric water pumps there are not working.

But there will be no food distributions–even by Grace Community Food Pantry, which generally distributes food every Saturday and Sunday, and provides some food distribution points on the west side of the county. “The power is out at the pantry so we’re hamstrung as far as what we can do,” Pastor Charles Silano, who runs the pantry, said. The pantry cannot receive or handle food without refrigeration. “We had no way to house it safely. So we’re going to be closed this weekend and we’ll start again next week,” Silano said.




Overall, however, Lord said Flagler County and Palm Cast made it through Hurricane Milton in much better shape than feared a few days ago. “As a community, we were very lucky,” Lord said. “It was not the worst end of the spectrum of things they gave us could happen to our community. So knock on wood is the old saying, right? It could have been worse, but it wasn’t. I also don’t want to be an alarmist. But when the Weather Service gives you rain, they gave us a range, and we were in the range.” The county got the rain but was on the low end of the range of storm winds.

“I very much believe that our community, the responders, all the different government agencies and our infrastructure, such as the streets that flood on purpose, did its job,” Lord continued. Where the system failed, “they were more unique cases versus a systemic problem. So I think that our community is very, very good. The team members involved in taking care of our community did an amazing job. A couple of them have some sleepless nights, making sure they were taking care of our community. And I just think we are a great community. I’m biased, because I have the privilege of working for our community. But there are many people that are government employees, nonprofit employees and even volunteers that stand together when these things happen in our community, to really take care of ourselves.”

It’s grimmer in the direct path of Hurricane Milton, where at least 13 deaths have been attributed to the storm so far–most of them on the east side of the state rather than in the landfall area near Siesta Key on the Gulf. Approaching noon Friday, 2.3 million households and businesses were still without power in Florida, including 40 percent of customers in Volusia County, 16 percent in Putnam, and much higher proportions in Gulf counties. In Pinellas County, only two hospitals were accepting patients, according to The New York Times.

A team of international scientists released a report on Oct. 9–a day before Milton’s landfall–about the intensity of recent hurricanes, concluding that “climate change is enhancing conditions conducive to the most powerful hurricanes like Helene, with more intense rainfall totals and wind speeds. This is in line with other scientific findings that Atlantic tropical cyclones are becoming wetter under climate change and undergoing more rapid intensification.” In other words, Helene may have been the deadliest hurricane in decades in the United States, but its intensity is no longer an unusual event.