Dozens of residents in Indiantown’s Booker Park neighborhood found themselves trapped in their homes as floodwaters from heavy rain swamped streets Saturday, making it impossible to drive in or out of the area.<\/p>\n
Angela Harrell, who has lived in Indiantown for more than 20 years, said she has never seen flooding this severe.<\/p>\n
WATCH: Flooding that trapped Indiantown residents prompts drainage concerns<\/p>\n
“I’ve been here 20 years and 8 months, and even after the storms and hurricane, I never saw it this bad. I can’t even drive my car \u2014 I had to park it two streets over,” Harrell said.<\/p>\n
Resident Melody Baum says the problem goes beyond the rainfall itself, pointing to a failure in the neighborhood’s drainage infrastructure.<\/p>\n
“It’s the drainage, actually. The drain is lower than what the water takes in. The water’s not going in the drains \u2014 the water’s coming back up in our houses,” Baum said.<\/p>\n
Baum says the flooding is so severe it is pushing water into a nearby home. She is also warning neighbors about potential dangers lurking in the floodwater.<\/p>\n
“You’ve got catfish and ducks out here in the water. It wouldn’t surprise me if a water moccasin isn’t near here\u2026 What worries me the most is bacteria in this water,” Baum said.<\/p>\n
Martin County Sheriff’s deputies drove through the area to check on residents.<\/p>\n
Harrell said the situation raises concerns about what a more serious storm could bring.<\/p>\n
“This not a [tropical] storm, nor a hurricane. Just imagine if one come\u2026 It’s crazy,” Harrell said.<\/p>\n
Baum is asking neighbors to stay inside until the water drains and is calling for a solution to the drainage system in the community.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens of residents in Indiantown’s Booker Park neighborhood found themselves trapped in their homes as floodwaters from heavy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[153873,153872,153871,171,173,172,13810],"class_list":["post-386103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-cousin-pleads-guilty-to-girls-murder","tag-girl-found-dead-in-woods","tag-lily-peters","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news","tag-wisconsin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}