DADE CITY, Fla. — Homeowners in Dade City are still feeling the repercussions from Hurricane Milton four months on.

What You Need To Know

  • Four months after Hurricane Milton, homeowners in Dade City are still feeling the repercussions of the storm

  • Residential areas were submerged under water, leaving homeowners stranded and unable to get to their homes

  • Pasco County says following the hurricanes and heavy rain, the state provided pumps and trucks to help relieve flooding in some areas

  • Pumps were redeployed outside of the county in early December, however, the county says if homeowners applied for FEMA assistance to follow up with them

The hurricane left residential areas completely under water, leaving homeowners stranded and unable to get to their homes. Residents are wondering what to do next.

“We’re not able to access our property because we can’t get to it, because it’s wet,” Kim Barnes said.

For the last 20 years, Barnes and her husband have been living on their property. But nothing would prepare them for what they witnessed last fall.

“Luckily, my son has a canoe, and we had to rescue the people that lived here and the people that were here who had a toddler,” said Barnes. “We had to keep going back and forth because we still had a cat in our house to feed and to take care of. We got the pumps here Nov. 1. It took probably about mid-December for the waters to recede a little bit.”

Their home and surrounding property was submerged under water after flooding of a nearby retention pond from Hurricane Milton. Something that could have been avoided, Barnes says, had the county listened to their previous concerns.

“We’ve been to so many meetings, fighting it and contesting it,” Barnes said. “Everything on record saying, ‘if you build this development, it’s going to make things worse.’ Not only does it make it worse for us, it makes it worse for everybody downstream. It makes it worse because the water comes from here, from Happy Hill, it comes down, and, actually, affects the people down in Hickory Hill and Fort King.”

With water now receded, the couple’s attention is working on bringing back their home while remaining hopeful of a solution from the county.

“I have no idea what they can do to fix this,” said Michael Barnes. “Even if they brought the level up here, which, you can see, would take a ton of dirt, it would displace insane amounts of water on other people.”

The Barnes say they plan to stay on their property knowing full well what can potentially happen again.

“It’s just scary because we’ve lost our vehicles," said Kim. "We had a total loss of our vehicles. I don’t want to lose our vehicles again, I don’t want to be out of our home again.”

A Pasco County spokesperson says following the hurricanes and heavy rain, the state provided pumps and trucks to help relieve flooding in some areas. However, those pumps were redeployed outside of the county in early December. The county also says if homeowners applied for FEMA assistance, they suggest following up with them.