State Wildlife Officers Rescued 60 People in Brevard's Flood, and a Helicopter Lifted a Florida Tech Student From a Retention Pond
Monday's Space Coast rescue count kept growing into the evening: 60 rescues by state wildlife officers on top of the sheriff's hundred-plus, three college students pulled from a flooded Melbourne pond - and Palm Bay's damage bill still waiting on Tuesday's receding water.
BREVARD COUNTY - The rescue operation in Brevard County's flood turned out to be bigger than the sheriff's tally alone. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials rescued 60 people in the county on Monday, Florida Today reported in coverage read by this desk - on top of the more than 100 motorists and residents helped by sheriff's deputies, and the dozens brought to safety by Palm Bay Fire Rescue, in a rainfall the National Weather Service called a one-in-a-1,000-year event.
The sharpest rescue of the day happened at a flooded retention pond off Babcock Street in Melbourne, where three Florida Tech students were pulled from the water - two by ropes, and the third airlifted out by an FWC helicopter, Melbourne Police Commander Shawn Eising told the paper. No flood deaths had been reported as of Monday's coverage.
What Monday could not finish, Tuesday starts: Palm Bay's damage assessment has not yet been completed and will come as the water recedes, Assistant Fire Chief John Ringleb said. For the Palm Bay neighborhoods whose water was shut off after the Port Malabar Boulevard water-main break, service stays off until conditions improve - and when it returns, those customers go under a precautionary boil-water notice, a rolling boil of at least one minute for drinking, cooking, ice, brushing teeth and washing dishes, or bottled water, until testing clears the system. It is the recovery checklist for a county that spent Monday being rescued from its own streets.
