Below are some of the Milton statistics from Plant City’s government. The information is the tip of the iceberg, and the debris numbers are increasing daily.
• 19,053 sandbags were passed out, equaling 13 dump truck loads of sand
• 3631 cars drove through the sandbag pick up
• 1,075 damaged buildings
• 1,056 damaged residences
• $24.7 million in damage
• $21.6 million in flood damage
• 133 traffic lights lost power
• 247 street signs including 163 stop signs needed repair
• 35 traffic beacons needed repair
• 195 daily dump truck trips to the vegetation dump site
• 28,313 cubic yards of trees and leaves have been picked up
• 1,604 cubic yards of household furniture per day are taken to the dump
• 3,593 estimated tons of debris to clean up after and Hurricane Milton, which is more than either Irma or Ian
Milton was one of the most destructive hurricanes on record to impact Florida. “I was saying unprecedented about all of this until I did my research….it is unprecedented only in our memories,” City Manager Bill McDaniel said. According to his research, the oldest recorded incidence of significant flooding was the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane which hit Plant City as a Category 5. The recorded sustained winds were 184 mph, with wind gusts up to 236 mph. That wind speed is three times that of Milton. Hurricane Donna struck Plant City in 1960 as a Category 4, with five to ten inches of rain, sustained wind of 145 mph, and gusts of up to 175 mph. This is the most recent storm that had rainfall comparable to the deluge from Milton.
Plant City fell in the band of Milton’s heaviest rain—from 10 to 15 inches. Data indicates about 13 inches of water fell here. The eyewall passed 15 to 20 miles south of Plant City, and tornadoes spun up as close as Dover and Durant. “The storm hit our water reclamation facility with a flow rate of 27 million gallons a day at the peak,” McDaniel said. “Our normal is five to six million gallons a day. When you talk about that volume of rain, it just overwhelms everything. ”
The city will conduct an “autopsy” of what caused the flooding in the city. “There is a lot to still dissect and figure out what happened,” McDaniel said. “It is a complex question and it requires looking at a many data sets. There are examples of different situations that occurred throughout the city. I did see drainage culverts that were blocked by debris, but that’s something that happens in a storm.”
At the direction of the City of Plant City, residents are piling debris alongside roadways for pickup. And of course people would like to see the debris cleaned up right away. “That is what we are trying to do, but we have a 30 square mile jurisdiction from which we are picking up tree debris and household debris,” McDaniel said. “It is going to take a little bit of time. We are making good progress. We have a tradition here of getting our city cleaned up quickly after these events.”
FEMA and the State of Florida will reimburse the Plant City government for the costs of whatever is cleaned up within 90 days after Milton struck. “We will beat that by a pretty significant margin,” McDaniel said.
“I was so impressed by the spirit of people. Everybody was out helping each other—neighbors helping neighbors,” McDaniel commented. Many people called and texted him offering equipment and supplies to help people and clean up the destruction. “When we got into this mode of recovery, this is where you see the heart and soul of Plant City really come alive.”
