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Walton County Residents Recover From Shoal River Flooding
03/30/09 - 05:26 PM

WMBB News Department

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Residents in Walton County are recovering from flooding while preparing for more tonight and for the rest of the week.

Emergency Operations Officials in Walton County spent the day warning resident around the Choctawhatchee River about the coming danger and helping residents in areas of the Shoal River that have already flooded.

One of those homes belongs to Mike Dugan, a resident of Mossy Head.

“This is the first time since I’ve been here that it’s flooded,” Dugan says. He evacuated before the flooding started and came back to almost two feet of water in his home.

“This was a pretty good rain occasion we had, and it was in such a straight line that I think the water was concentrated in small areas,” Dugan says. “When it gets that much water in one area and it has no where to go, it comes up, and of course it went down just as fast as it came up.”

Edwin Baltzley, Walton County Emergency Response Director, says many residents were surprised by how quickly the waters rose.

“This was higher than it’s been in a long time it’s not the highest of my understanding,” Baltzley says, “But it was probably the fastest it rose. They didn’t expect it to rise quite this fast. We were just talking to a lady up here, she said she didn’t expect it to get this fast; she’s gone two hours next thing she knows she has water in her yard, that’s how fast it came up.”

“We had one fellow who tried to evacuate here but got stranded,” Dugan recalls, “His truck went underwater and he had to go back to his home and be evacuated at five in the morning by E.M.S.”

Dugan spend the day trying to clean what he could from he house, a difficult task considering his street is still completely covered by water.

Emergency operations officials say the shoal river rose more than 14 feet in some areas, cresting at 22.7 feet Saturday morning.

Baltzley encourages all residents of Walton County to keep an eye on the rivers as they rise, to go ahead and have a plan to move out and to have a place to stay for a few days.