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Ridge Manor residents surrounded by devastating levels of flooding: 'Nowhere else to go'

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Published  October 21, 2024 10:12pm EDT
Hernando County
FOX 13 News

Neighbors still dealing with high water

Jordan Bowen reports

TAMPA, Fla. - It’s a level of devastation residents said they never could have imagined would happen in Ridge Manor, located in Hernando County. Since Thursday, residents said the water around their homes has continued rising.

"It's horrible. I have never seen it like this ever, ever," Ridge Manor resident Maria Wieand said.

The neighborhood of about 100 homes near US 301 and Cortez Boulevard has some of the worst flooding. Cars are fully submerged, homes are surrounded by water on all sides and roads are impassable with only one way in and out of the neighborhood. As Wieand explained, it's surrounded by multiple lakes.

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"All three are completely flooded, and it has nowhere else to go, and they're all meeting each other, and they keep telling us it's receding," Wieand said. "We got nervous and every day we would mark it and watch it. We weren't concerned because we feel like we're on higher ground than everybody else, closer to the lake, but then we have a retention pond behind the house."

She said from Saturday morning to Saturday night, the water rose as much as seven feet in some areas. That's when she and her husband called on friends late Sunday night who came with several trucks and emptied out everything they could from their home.

"We're at the point where there is nothing in my house. If I didn't call my friends in the community last night to come and help us empty the remainder of our house, I would have nothing," Wieand said. "I would have nothing. We had 15 to 20 trucks here with people just loading. We pulled cabinets off the wall, dishwasher, refrigerator, sinks."

Monday, other residents did the same, using kayaks and boats to get anything they could from their homes. Now, residents, like Wieand, are hoping to get answers soon from the county or the state about why this is happening in their area.

"I just want them to know this is not Milton. There is something behind this. There's something going on in the green swamps. We are being inundated with water from somewhere else," Wieand said.

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