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In 2015, Escambia County’s Stormwater Advisory Team (SWAT) drew up a $417 million list of 228 projects to prevent widespread flooding throughout the county. Since then, the county has spent less than 10 percent of those dollars. Escambia officials also drew up a separate list of 21 stormwater projects within its largest city, Pensacola.  Price […]

Spencer Blomquist lives in Cantonment, a suburb north of Pensacola. His neighborhood sits on flood-prone, low-lying land along Eleven Mile Creek. After a historic rainstorm in 2014 flooded his neighborhood and many others, Escambia County made a $417 million stormwater agenda. READ MORE: What Happened to Escambia’s $417 Million Flood Agenda? Despite initial optimism, the county

As Hurricane Sally approached Escambia County, 139,055 households needed to prepare for the worst. But even before storm surge and flooding drowned the county, it was already too late for an overwhelming majority of those homeowners. In a county that has experienced three major flood events since 2004, only 14 percent of homes have flood insurance,

In 2014, historic rainfall flooded the first floor of Doug and Wendy Underhill’s home on a barrier island near Pensacola, Fla. It would be the fifth time since 1995 that the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) would pay out tens of thousands of dollars for flood damage to the house — a total that far

In the Florida panhandle, a local utility and a county have joined forces to reduce the risk of flooding and contamination in a small, low-income neighborhood called Beach Haven, just steps from the Pensacola Bay, an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico. While some homes in Beach Haven date to the 1940s, most of the

Like most tragedies, this one came as a total surprise. It started in the basement laundry of the Escambia County jail, preceded for hours by the constant patter of raindrops falling on rooftops and asphalt outside. By the time of the disaster, the relentless drumbeat of rain had turned nearby streets into untamed streams. The

Kenneth Owen, 81, a retired Navy pilot, lives in a lakefront home in Pensacola close to places he depends on – the Navy hospital, exchange and commissary. His otherwise ideal location has one major flaw. The lake his house sits on, Lake Charlene, has a troubling penchant for flooding.  In 2014, after record-setting rainfall, 130