'I thought I would be safer': Zephyrhills residents flooded out during Hurricane Milton

Zephyrhills - Not even a week after Hurricane Milton, a Zephyrhills neighborhood still copes with devastating flooding after its retention pond overflowed. 

Barbara Redman said her daughter Jenna, who lives on the corner of 9th Ave and Cypress St., spent the past few days salvaging what she could from her home, which had 3-4 feet of standing water inside.

Redman said she decided to evacuate from her mobile home to her daughter's home ahead of Hurricane Milton, thinking conditions would be safer. 

"Here, this storm happens. I took my stuff and came out here. I thought I would be safer," Redman said. 

READ MORE: Impacted by Hurricane Milton? Here's how to apply for FEMA help

Redman said Hurricane Helene brought some flooding to Jenna's neighborhood but that she never could have anticipated the flooding Hurricane Milton would bring. 

"We were just putting stuff up higher. Wednesday night, the winds started picking up," Redman said. "Who would guess it (flood water) started pouring in the baseboards and everything."

Redman described trying to stop the flood waters from entering her daughter's home during the storm. 

"She put up big sandbags, plastic, everything. We were bailing and bailing, trying to prevent it from coming in. We finally had to give up because it was coming into the house," Redman said.

Together, they made the call to escape to higher ground. 

"She has two dogs and had to swim them out," Redman said. 

The neighborhood retention pond next to Jenna's home was supposed to collect outstanding rainwater. But on Saturday, the very top of its fence was the only part of the property that was not submerged.

Steven Pfenneig, Redman's next-door neighbor, said the City of Zephyrhills did what it could to prepare for Milton. 

"The city came out, put big pipes in, they ran it across, there’s a church over there, there’s another retention pond over on 7th Avenue, they pumped it into that," Pfenneig said. 

Those measures proved no match for Hurricane Milton's rainfall, which ran down the sloped street Jenna's home sits at the bottom of.

The City of Zephyrhills said crews would usually pump water into nearby retention ponds, but they must now wait until they significantly lower or empty out entirely first.

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