Eta brings flooding, standing water near homes in parts of Lee County

All around Lee County, our crew spotted standing water and flooded ditches after Eta went by our coast as a tropical storm.

Rain from the storm caused lots of flooding at Buckingham Air Park, where cars could barely get through Monday.

“My truck, the water was on top of the hood,” Virginia Alvarado said.

Alvarado remembers rain pouring down and how fast water rose during Hurricane Irma. She’s thankful history did not repeat itself with Eta.

“It takes a couple of days before it gets down. Sometimes it takes one week, sometimes two weeks,” Alvarado said. “You can have snakes and everything out there. You don’t even know.”

Down the road, Tina Land and Brandon McLeroy know the drill too

“We expect it at this point,” Land said.

“We gotta keep an eye on it, or else, we’re gonna have a serious issue, ” McLeroy said.

But Tom Feminella said Eta was worse than Irma.

“I’ve lived here 33 years, and this is the absolute worst I’ve ever seen it,” Feminella said. “We’ve had 10 inches of rain. We’ve had Irma, where the eye went over us. We’ve not had this kind of flooding.”

He told us leaving his home isn’t an option until ll all the water near it drains.

“We’re gonna get a downpour every now and then for the next four or five days, probably, so I’m not sure how long exactly this will take to go,” Feminella said. “But it’s a little bit scary, yeah.”

Chief Meteorologist Jim Farrell told us the area experienced 5 inches of rain, resulting in the flooding experienced by some parts. Some of the standing water has lessened since.

The amount of time it will take for water to drain is the worry, and Lee County has a plan to ensure water near these community members goes away faster in the future.

Lee County works on plan to fix drainage issues in problem areas