- November 23, 2024
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While counties on Florida’s west coast received most of the damage from former Hurricane Helene, now Tropical Storm Helene, Flagler County residents were buffeted by high winds overnight.
Flagler County is reporting that Marineland on the county’s north side saw peak winds at 63 mph at around 10 p.m. on Sept. 26. Winds at the Hammock Dunes Bridge and in Flagler Beach reached around 55 mph between 11 p.m. and midnight, while west Palm Coast saw winds as high as 39 mph.
At one point, around 20,000 people in Flagler County were without power, according to Flagler County Communications Coordinator Julie Murphy. On Florida Power & Light’s power tracker map, some 840 FPL customers are still without power as of 4 p.m. on Sept. 27.
Damage in most areas were minimal, with multiple reports of downed trees and damaged fences county-wide, including across roads on Old A1A near Washington Oaks and in Bunnell, at Lemon Street and Fig Street.
One large tree fell into a resident’s home on Sellman Court in Palm Coast, damaging the roof and ceiling, Murphy wrote. In an email from Palm Coast Fire Department Lt. Patrick Juliano, he said that a second tree fell on the side of a home in Palm Coast's Woodlands section, but did not cause and structural damage. No one was injured in either case, he wrote.
In total, the PCFD responded to 34 calls between 8 p.m. Sept. 26 and 8 a.m. Sept. 27, primarily about downed trees, wires or other debris, he said.
Coastal Engineer Administrator Ansley Wren-Key completed her assessment of the county's 18-mile shoreline and noted that the water levels overnight did not reach the dunes along any stretch of the coast.
In an emailed statement, she wrote that the beach's lower berm has a small, 18-inch scarp, which is due to the nature of the Army Corps renourishment project, relying on nature to move sand offshore.
However, a larger scarp of about 3 feet was found in the last 10 blocks of the USACE project. Wren-Key wrote that she would be reaching out to the Army Corps and Flagler Beach about removing the larger scarp.
This story was updated at 5:57 p.m. on Sept. 27.
