Tropical Storm Nicole could doom some beachfront homes
VERO BEACH - Tropical Storm Nicole hit Florida as a hurricane Thursday, sending hits highest storm surges to places that lost their seawalls during Hurricane Ian only weeks before.
In Daytona Beach Shores, rising seas threatened the foundations of at least a dozen high-rise condos and houses.
Krista Dowling Goodrich, who manages 130 rental homes in Daytona Beach Shores as director of sales and marketing at Salty Dog Vacations, witnessed the beachfront disappear behind some of the properties as evacuations were under way just ahead of the storm. She was trying to reach the scene Thursday morning to see how they fared.
"While we were there the whole backyard just started collapsing into the ocean. It went all the way up to the house," she said. The water also compromised the remaining land between a row of tall condominium buildings nearby, she said.
The Daytona Beach Shores Beach Safety Ocean Rescue building collapsed onto the remaining strip of sand, officials deemed multiple multi-story coastal residential buildings unsafe, and went door-to-door telling people to grab their possessions and leave.
"These were the tall high-rises. So the people who wouldn't leave, they were physically forcing them out because it's not safe," Goodrich said. "I'm concerned for the infrastructure of the area right now because once the seawalls are gone, they're not going to just let people go back in ... there will be a lot of people displaced for a while."
Authorities had warned that Nicole's storm surge could further erode many beaches hit by Hurricane Ian in September. The rare November hurricane prompted officials to shut down airports and theme parks and order evacuations in areas that included former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club.
Nicole made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane at about 3 a.m. Thursday near Vero Beach, but caused no significant damage there. By 10 a.m., Nicole's maximum sustained winds were down to 50 mph.
Robbie Berg, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami advised people to understand that hazards from Tropical Storm Nicole "will exist across the state of Florida today." Nicole will briefly emerge over the northeastern corner of the Gulf of Mexico Thursday afternoon before moving over the Florida Panhandle and Georgia, he said.
The storm left south Florida sunny and calm as it moved north, but could dump as much as 6 inches of rain over Blue Ridge Mountains by Friday, the hurricane center said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a Thursday news conference in Tallahassee that about 333,000 electric customers were without power at mid-morning, about 2.9% of the state's total. DeSantis said there were 17,000 electric linemen ready to begin restoring power and that numerous other assets including rescue boats and vehicles will be deployed as needed.
"We're ready and we have resources to respond to whatever post-storm needs may arise," the governor said.
Almost two dozen school districts were closing schools for the storm and 15 shelters had opened along Florida's east coast, the governor said.
For storm-weary Floridians, Nicole was only the third November hurricane to hit their shores since recordkeeping began in 1853. The previous ones were the 1935 Yankee Hurricane and Hurricane Kate in 1985.
