A storm surge flooded roads on Fort Myers Beach on Sunday, shops and restaurants saw the water rising at their doors. This comes as many are still rebuilding from Hurricane Ian.
While Debby impacted Southwest Florida as a tropical storm, At 11 p.m, Saturday, it was upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane as it approached the Big Bend Region.
"What can you do against Mother Nature? That’s the hardest thing to deal with this Mother Nature," said Chad Kay.
"I just drove right in there, it’s nothing new to me," said Nicholas Olsen.
NBC2 saw roads completely covered by water and felt strong winds impacting the island. Lee County deputies helped patrol the island to make sure everyone was safe.
"We’re no stranger to storms obviously Southwest Florida the state of Florida, but what we did, we proactively plan. We deployed all our resources throughout the county, especially in the areas we knew what we needed," said Sheriff Carmine Marceno.
Sunday at around 6:30 p.m. NBC2 saw crews removing the sand that was blown onto Times Square. The area was also flooded.
"They’re getting it together real quick," Olsen said.
Some people just wanted to have fun. Alexander Griffith says that this storm is nothing compared to Hurricane Ian.
"Kids are out here playing; as you can see, they’re having a good time; there’s nobody else out here on the beach because everybody is scared away," Griffith said.
Marceno told NBC2 that deputies only noticed cars stranded on roads; other than that, there was nothing serious to report.
"Flooding is always a concern, we’ve assessed continuously throughout the day, updates continuously throughout the day, and we are ready for everything that comes our way," Marceno said.