RIVERVIEW, Fla. — People who live on Parkway Circle in Riverview along the Alafia River say they’re used to flooding. However, what happened during Hurricane Helene is something they’ve never experienced before, with nearly five feet of water in their homes.

What You Need To Know

  • Residents on Parkway Circle in Riverview, a street on the Alafia River, had up to five feet of water in their homes

  • They say this is the worst flooding the neighborhood has ever experienced

“I’ll show you how high the water level got to,” said Courtney French, who has lived on Parkway Circle for over three years. 

She says flooding three to four feet is actually pretty normal for the area, but this time it came much higher.

“Even people who’ve lived on this street for 20 years haven’t seen anything this bad, so this is bad. It’s becoming more and more, actually. It’s not a matter of if it’s going to happen, it’s when. And the amount of devastation of it — this has been the most this entire block has seen,” she said.

(Spectrum News/Fallon Silcox)

Some of those neighbors stayed with French and her husband the night of the storm since they have a two-story home. However, French said everything downstairs was destroyed.

“This is definitely a good, well over $10-15,000, but it’s not even that. It’s sentimental things, as well, that I had put up but with the flooding being so high, it knocked everything over,” she said.

Despite doing everything they could to prepare, Hurricane Helene pushed in more water than expected.

She said all of her neighbors are now helping each other recover, and looking forward to the day when this is all behind them.