Florida Fish and Wildlife officers joined neighbors helping to rescue people living in the Pemberton Creek area on Friday, as flood waters continued to rise.
The Pemberton Creek neighborhood, north of I-4, is not far from Lake Thonotosassa.
Jay Bolnick has lived there since 1996 and told the ABC Action News I-Team, “We’ve had some flooding, but never up to our house, you know, never.”
The flooding not only got into his house — but stranded his nearly 50 head of cattle, the sheriff's office wants to help him rescue.
“They’re on one little spot of dry land over there. The hardest thing is — what do you do?” Bolnick said, after swimming out and trying to coax the cattle to dry land.
Bolnick was able to save his donkey and alpacas. But he wonders how devastating the flooding would have been had state and county leaders taken concerns more seriously.
“Look, we reached out to the county and our county commissioner a month ago, and we told them before even Helene started, we had a mess out here, you couldn’t even see the creek it was so full of vegetation," Bolnick said, showing the I-Team a photo he took September 11. “They told me that after the rainy season’s over, that’s when they’re going to come clean the creek out. This is before Helene and Milton.”
“Baker Creek, which comes all the way, flows to the north, to Lake Thonotosassa, it starts like down in Valrico. So you have a lot of areas draining into Baker Creek, which our concern has been all along to get the county to come out here and clean the creek out," he said.
Bolnick said they still would be flooded.
"But it wouldn’t be as high, because there would have been a lot of water that got out of here," he said.
Bolnick brought the I-Team back to his home.
“You’ve got to get people out here, you know, like you’re doing right now, let ‘em see what’s going on," he said. “And it’s not the same. Even when people see it on TV, it’s not the same as seeing it right here. It’s just — I don’t think you can have as much empathy for what other people have gone through until you’ve gone through it yourself, you know. Not saying that’s a good thing, but it shapes who we are, our character and everything, what we go through. Again, try to give thanks just for the fact that we’re here right now.”
Sierra Schmidt and her family live on Flicker Court, the same street as Bolnick.
"In our house, it’s about two and a half to three feet of water," she said. “We have ridden the roller-coaster of emotions today. I think we’ve had our time of crying and then our time — we have a wonderful church family that’s come out to help us and we were able to salvage some of the things in our home”
Schmidt is grateful for the help, and at the same time, left guessing why she and her neighbors' concerns about cleaning the creek weren't taken more seriously.
"It just didn’t happen. They said, it’s going to happen after the rainy season. Well, this is part of that problem," Schmidt said. “We would have liked for that to be a little bit higher on their priority list."
The I-Team plans to bring the concerns to county leaders.
“You can’t wait until it’s too late, you know. You have to have a sense of urgency," Bolnick said.
This story started with a tip. If you have something you'd like the I-Team to investigate, contact Kylie.
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