South Florida Airports Reopen After Floods Residual Recede

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Fort Lauderdale, Florida will be having its airport reopen on Friday morning. This is coming after two days of heavy rain that resulted in planes and travelers getting stranded as the streets were flooded with water. After sunrise, final inspections were done and it was announced that operations would start at 9am.

The airport shut down Wednesday after a huge storm dumped over two feet of rain. Before coming to the airport, travelers should check with their airlines for updated flight times and we thank you for your patience during this time. Broward County Mayor Lamar Fisher said sadly at a conference on Thursday that nature has not been kind to us.

The National Weather Service sent out a warning that even though the flood has stopped, there may still be roads filled with water which could be dangerous. All around Fort Lauderdale people were cleaning up after it rained for most of Monday and Wednesday. It was so much rain that some places got 15 inches (38 centimeters) to 26 inches (66 centimeters) in just hours, which was an all-time record!

On Thursday, people in Edgewood had to walk through water that was up to their knees or use a canoe or kayak to get around. Dennis Vasquez, who makes window screens for a living, helped his neighbor by using an inflatable mattress to move their things away from the flood. His house filled with rainwater which ruined all of his stuff! He said sadly in Spanish that “everything is gone… but I will get new things”.

Christopher Alfonso and Tony Mandico, who live close together in Edgewood for 50 years, said that their houses are most likely destroyed. They added that this never happened before 10 years ago when a sewer system replaced septic tanks and made some roads higher than other places which caused rain to get into the lower streets. Additionally, airlines had to cancel over 650 of their flights coming in at Fort Lauderdale on Thursday.

Southwest airlines has had to cancel around 50 flights through Friday morning. To help customers, they are letting them rebook their flights from Miami and Palm Beach without having to pay extra.

Frontier Airlines also moved two of their Fort Lauderdale flights to Miami but had to cancel other 15 trips. Additionally, Allegiant Air cancelled some of its services and even rerouted others towards Tampa, Orlando and Punta Gorda areas.

Broward County Public Schools, which has over 256,000 students and is the sixth-largest school district in the US, shut down for two days (Thursday and Friday) because some classrooms were filled with water.

On Wednesday, it was an extremely chaotic scene outside since Keith Hickman (a tow truck driver) reported seeing cars floating around like boats!

Shawn Bhatti, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service said that recently there was an unusually large amount of rainfall in the region. He witnessed cars floating on water because a truck passing by created huge waves! The actual amount of rainfall is up to 25 inches according to some gauges which is incredible as he has never seen anything like it before.

It was very rare and special – it’s a 1 in 1000 chance of happening within a year! That’s why it’s considered an historical event. This news was reported by Fort Lauderdale Kozin, Spencer, Frisaro and from Concord, New Hampshire by Associated Press reporter Kathy McCormack.