Tropical Storm Debby’s heavy rain had mostly subsided when Allison Cavallaro woke up on Monday, Aug. 5, but the water outside her home in Sarasota’s Laurel Meadows neighborhood was still approaching.

First, water pooled on the street, then on the grass, then seeped into his air conditioning unit, into his garage, and by late afternoon, sloshed into his living room. Then the brown water remained for days.

“We were all like, ‘why aren’t you bringing this up? What’s going on?’ “Callarro recalled.

Allison Cavallaro

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Laurel Meadows was not in a flood zone, but it flooded much worse than even some nearby neighborhoods, leading many to wonder why.

“This county is scared,” Cavallaro said this week, standing near the mobile home where he now lives with his family. It is parked outside his house, which has been destroyed due to water damage.

“If they don’t get the real information, they’ll think it’s overdevelopment, neglect, all those things we don’t know.”

Allison Cavallaro

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Courtesy

On Thursday, October 24, Cavallaro was among those standing when Stephen Suau presented the results of his independent review of the flooding in Debby at Selby Library.

Suau was the first engineer to organize a stormwater department in Sarasota. He left that job more than two decades ago and opened his own consulting firm.

Shortly after the storm passed, he said the county asked him to do a third-party review of the flood. Suau refused to take money for it, wanting to ensure there was no perception that the county had somehow bought his opinion.

“As I thought about it, I realized that something very unusual could have happened,” Suau told the crowd at the event, organized by the Sarasota Citizens Action Network (SCAN).

Armed with a deep knowledge of the stormwater systems around Sarasota County, the floodplains and the way water generally behaves here, Suau said an important clue came from a YouTube video posted by a resident.

About 35 seconds later, Blayde Stone’s video showed water flowing over Delft Road heading west. The road skirts the southern end of Laurel Meadows and runs directly towards Cow Pen Slough.

“There are several centimeters of water that have risen over this road and are falling, like ripples over this road,” Suau explained. He learned that the video was taken on Wednesday, or more than two days after Debby died.

“I realized there was a gap,” Suau said, referring to the earthen dam that separates Cow Pen Slough from the Phillippi Creek watershed.

Suau alerted the county. “I told them, go to the end of Delft Road and go south. And it has to be there somewhere. At the end of the day, they found it.”

The gap was located on a level mound of land that is built between different bodies of water to prevent one from moving into the other, essentially dividing Cow Pen Slough from the Phillippi Creek watershed.

The breach was repaired before Hurricane Helene hit in September, county officials confirmed.

Suau said a remote sensing method known as LIDAR showed the gap existed since 2018.

“It’s been there for a while, five or six years. And when I looked at the video, I could see that it was like Brazilian peppers and woody plants that were in the gap,” Suau said, referring to a video he said. The location was sent to you by the county.

Spencer Anderson, Sarasota County public works director, said he has worked closely with Suau.

“We became aware of the affected area after Tropical Storm Debby passed through, and yes, that appears to be a major contributing factor to the flooding in Laurel Meadows,” Anderson told WUSF.

“The rain is the main reason, right? I’m not sure if there wouldn’t have been flooding if that hadn’t happened, but the gap most likely exacerbated the problem.”

Debby’s heaviest rain drenched Sarasota on Sunday, August 4, dumping up to 17 inches of rain in some areas before making landfall as a hurricane in the Big Bend region to the north.

Debby’s rainfall exceeded the 100-year standard that Sarasota’s stormwater systems are built to withstand: up to 10 inches of rain in a 24-hour period.

Anderson said it’s unclear how long the problem existed.

“The rain is a big part of what happened, but we’re not 100% sure what was there before this. It’s an area you don’t see very often,” Anderson said.

Suau said his recommendations to the county will be delivered in the coming days. He says annual inspections of such dams should be common practice in the future.

For Cavallaro, listening to Suau’s presentation provided some answers.

“It gave me peace of mind. I think he’s right. I think all the evidence matches up and I’m glad he released it. I feel like the county is being transparent and keeping us up to date as they learn what’s going on,” Cavallaro said.

But she and other residents still have questions. Most of those who live in Laurel Meadows suffered six-figure losses of belongings and damage to their homes that must be repaired.

Only a handful of families have been able to return to their homes three months after the storm.

“We want to know: Will it happen again? Did they fix the problem for good? And why wasn’t it fixed as of 2018? What happened?” Cavallaro said.

He said some residents are considering legal action.

“If it shouldn’t have happened, shouldn’t they be held liable for negligence? We don’t know what that looks like. We don’t know if an attorney is willing to take this on. Hopefully so.”