‘I was nervous:’ St. Augustine residents dealing with impacts of Milton

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — It’s been more than 24 hours since Hurricane Milton made landfall, and St. Augustine is still feeling some of those gusty winds.

From waves crashing over the sea wall to storm surges raising the water levels, St. Augustine took quite a beating from Milton.

“I was nervous as it came through because it was a category 5,” St. Augustine native Dakota Moores said.

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The hurricane left St. Augustine with debris on the roadway, downed power lines, and flooding on the streets.

Thursday afternoon, tidal flooding had shut down the Bridge of Lions, keeping drivers off for a couple of hours.

“I think us walking is dangerous, yes, but I feel like a lot of cars being on the road is a lot worse,” Flagler College Student Taylor Wells said. “So, I think it was smart on St. Augustine’s part to shut the roads down

Our Action News Jax First Alert Weather team said Milton brought a total of about 5-8 inches of rain with a storm surge of 3-4 feet. They said the max wind gusts were up to 60-70 mph.

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While each storm is different, Moores said Milton didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in St. Augustine this area typically sees flooding.

“I thought it was going to be worse,” Moores said.

Others thought so too.

“We didn’t get the flooding in this area,” Candlelight South owner George Tracy said.

George Tracy has owned the Candlelight South restaurant for more than 10 years. He said he thought he would receive the same damage he got from Hurricane Matthew and Irma. But compared to those storms, he got off easy.

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“This is ground zero for flooding over here at the base of the Bridge of Lions and we didn’t get the surge that we had in previous storms,” Tracy said. “So it didn’t come up to my back door. I’ve gotten over – for Matthew, we had over 2 feet in the building. We didn’t get any water even up to the sandbags or anywhere to the back of the building. And the power stayed on, which is incredible.”

As of this report, the Florida Power and Light map is showing more than 8600 customers are still without power.

St Johns County Fire Rescue officials said there were no storm-related injuries. But they said they received a 300-percent increase in calls, since Wednesday 8 a.m. to Thursday at 8 p.m. with nearly 400 calls. The daily 24-hour average is closer to 100. The crews responded to downed power lines, fallen trees, and flooding.

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