Tag: Storm Season

MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — A family business in Manatee County is investing in new equipment that they say will make them more prepared for storms.

The financial impact of Hurricane Milton reached well into six figures, and The Chop Shop faced a long road to recovery.

Susan Higbee says she treats her customers there like family.

Higbee is the owner of the butcher shop and grocery store in Bradenton. It has been in her family since 1971, and she has spent a lot of time there.

“I mean in the store since I was 13,” she said.

Higbee took on the ownership role after her brother passed away in 2019. The future of the business is personal to her.

“Everything, everything. It’s my family’s legacy,” she explained.

But she was worried she would have to close the shop after high winds from Hurricane Milton left their mark.

“It was so devastating,” she said.

There was significant damage to the roof and A/C units. Their sign was impacted, too. The damage led to water intrusion, but the most expensive loss was actually the meat that couldn’t be saved because the power was out.

“Just product, probably $175,000 at least. At least that’s just product. Not counting the building, not counting the sign, not counting anything else,” she said.

That’s why she is buying new generators and had workers install a gas line this week, so in the future they will avoid losing both customers and product.

“We lost power for several days. We lost pretty much all of our inventory. The little bit that we could sell and that we gave away. Employees lost a lot of pay because we weren’t open,” she said.

Highbee wants to be prepared for future storms.

Because she knows as long as she has her family and her customers, The Chop Shop’s legacy in Bradenton will live on.

MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — Manatee County rancher Jim Strickland says Hurricane Milton brought 6 to 8-foot waves to his property, which is more than 20 miles from the Gulf.

He says rebuilding from the damage has been slow.

This is a call that Strickland has mastered over the years.

“I’ve raised about 12 generations of these cows,” he said.

Strickland and his family own two ranches in Myakka City, including a 1,300-acre one called “Lost Girl Prairie.”

It may look nice now, but after last year’s hurricanes, he says the property had significant damage — including about 600 downed trees.

“My engineers tell me that we had 6 to 8-foot waves blowing across the water, because we’ve got about 600 acres here of lakes,” he explained.

The strong waves from Hurricane Milton eroded the dikes on his property — barriers that separate bodies of water, crucial for his ranch.

“So now we’re fixing the dikes as fast as we can. It’s hurricane season, but it has taken a year to get the appropriate permits, to get the bids, to get the company to do the work here,” he said.

The work started a couple of weeks ago. Strickland received a federal grant to help rebuild. Part of the money went to hiring a crew to make repairs. They have already fixed three miles of dikes.

“We are coming through patching it up with a little extra dirt to make it thicker,” said Seven Smith, a heavy machinery operator working for Strickland.

There’s only one mile left to repair. One can tell where the patches were made by the white color of the clay-dirt mixture.

Strickland says these repairs are essential.

“When you have an emergency, like a hurricane that knocks out dikes that could possibly affect other people around here, that could help flood them out — which would not be of help.”

Strickland’s ranches are his livelihood. Those repairs were necessary, but the work he’s doing is also protecting the community around him.

MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — Manatee County officials recently approved $3 million in funding for emergency repairs to the Lake Manatee Dam.

Information gained after last year’s hurricane season has led to a multi-million dollar restoration project at the dam. After significant rainfall forced officials to release water, flooding followed — prompting a special assessment.

“Due to the, you know, extensive hurricane season we had last year, one of the recommendations was to do what’s called a ground-penetrating radar assessment of the dam face. So as a result of that, they identified areas where there are potential voids within the dam face,” said Patrick Shea, the utilities director for Manatee County.

He said those voids are gaps within the dam, and that the assessment found dozens of them.

“Voids can happen when the water gets through cracks in the dam and starts to wash away some of that cemented soil. So the voids are just kind of gaps within the structure itself,” he said.

Shea noted that the voids have developed over time in the decades-old dam.

“Voids are created over time — wave action from the lake, the lapping of the water, and just overall degradation of the dam over the years. The dam is 61 years old,” he added.

Now, $3 million will be spent to repair the side of the dam that faces the water.

“When they’re finding these small voids, they’ll go in and inject a two-part epoxy into the dam. It’s really a preventative measure to avoid an emergency situation at the dam,” he said.

Officials say the work will be completed within the next 30 days.

The Lake Manatee Dam receives an annual professional engineer’s report on its condition.