Heavy rain floods, damages Cape Coral plaza

Rain and floods shutting down businesses in Cape Coral, including a salon off Nicholas Parkway and Southwest Pine Island Road with water all over the floor.

It’ll be hard overcoming the obstacles facing the salon without power while having water damage.

From an ice cream shop to a salon, businesses in a plaza are shut down from Monday’s storm in the morning without any certainty of when they’ll reopen.

Bruce Todd, owner of Bruce Todd Hair Salon, said one of his employees called him while panicking Monday morning.

“I told her to put it on FaceTime so that I could see what was going on. And when she showed me the FaceTime, I was in a panic too. Because I’ve never seen anything like it before…to see rain pouring into the entire, every square foot of the salon was just, and I was helpless. You know, it was, it was scary,” Todd said.

The plaza’s property manager said water from the storm filled and overwhelmed its gutter system. And instead of the water going down the gutters, it rushed into different parts of the plaza.

“It literally was raining from every square inch of the ceiling, from about three-quarters of the way into the salon into the back entrances…they were just scrambling, trying to get everything out of the line of fire of the water… I was just praying for the whole time,” Todd said.

Between the water damage and lack of power, Todd and other business owners expect to be closed for business for at least a few days.

“It’s gonna be a while before we are able to work again. So pretty, we’re pretty sad about the whole thing. It’s pretty tragic,” Todd said.