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Tropical Storm Floods NASA's Shuttle Home Base

Posted on: Thursday, 21 August 2008, 09:50 CDT

Tropical Storm Fay sloshed torrential rain on central Florida on Wednesday; streets were flooded in knee-high water as it stalled over the U.S. space shuttle fleet's home port at Cape Canaveral.

The rain crept into hundreds of homes, and water was as high as 4 feet in some areas.

Emergency teams in airboats and boats frantically rescued people as 21 inches of rain pelted down in one day.

"We've had a lot of flooding in isolated neighborhoods, people with anywhere from 6 inches to 4 feet (1.2 meters) of water in their homes," said Erick Gill, public information officer for St. Lucie County, just north of West Palm Beach.

"We've had just under 1,000 homes impacted by the flooding. We've had to rescue people in boats and airboats," Gill said. An airboat is a flat-bottomed vessel with an airplane propeller at the back and is useful in shallow water and swamps.

At the Kennedy Space Center in Brevard County, emergency management spokeswoman Kimberly Prosser said some places had registered nearly two feet of rain since Fay came ashore on Florida's southwest coast on Tuesday.

"We're getting beat on and beat on and beat on. It's still over us," said Deputy Jeff Luther, a spokesman for the emergency operations center and the sheriff's office in Indian River County, just south of Brevard.

The deadly storm killed more than 50 people in the Caribbean before churning over Cuba, the Florida Keys and then reaching the Florida peninsula.

It was about 30 miles north-northeast of Cape Canaveral by 5 p.m. (2100 GMT), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

Meteorologists say was moving north at an excruciatingly slow 2 miles per hour (4 kph), meaning it would keep soaking central Florida for some time.

Fay is one of a half dozen storms in what forecasters predict will be an unusually busy Atlantic hurricane season.

Earlier this week, Fay threatened to become a hurricane with top sustained winds of at least 74 mph (119 kph) before crossing Key West at the end of the Florida Keys island chain before making a second U.S. landfall near Naples.

It then stunned hurricane experts by gaining strength over land, and appeared likely to threaten the United States for the third time as a potential hurricane once it emerged over water off the Atlantic coast.

Tropical storms dissipate quickly if they do not receive needed warm seawater for fuel.

Fay’s top winds did not rise above 50 mph (85 kph) on Wednesday. In fact, it appeared unlikely the storm would emerge far enough out over the Atlantic to strengthen.

A kite boarder was the only serious injury reported in Florida when he was picked up by a gust and slammed like a rag doll onto a beach and into a building in Fort Lauderdale. Fay will likely to be remembered mainly for its rainfall.

Gov. Charlie Crist deemed Fay a disaster and sought federal emergency funds.

However, the rain was drastically needed in a state where urban development in the past decade and a couple of relatively dry years has strained water supplies.

Crist said, "This storm is turning into a serious, catastrophic flooding event, particularly in southern Brevard County."

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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