Crews continue to work on A1A sand surge

FORT LAUDERDALE BEACH, Fla. (WSVN) -- The super storm started by dumping plenty of rain in South Florida last week, creating beach erosion, which work crews are still cleaning up several days later.

This time of year, South Florida usually sees a higher tide than usual, which generally causes a mess with sand on the road, but never to this scale. Because of the creeping storm surge left behind by Hurricane Sandy, most of A1A has remained closed for three days.

"We had severe flooding throughout the City of Fort Lauderdale," said a local official. "If you look at what happened on A1A, we had huge surges that came up over the wall, all over A1A. We had to close stretches of A1A. So we had significant flooding in every low-lying spot in the city."

The City of Fort Lauderdale Beach is providing businesses with sand bags to prevent flooding. Bulldozers have been working hard shoveling sand that has been washed up to A1A by creating a barrier. "It was flooded," said a Fort Lauderdale resident. "It was like the ocean in here. But the city came last night, and they put a lot of those sand bags, and I appreciate it very much. It helped a lot."

Long after Sandy moved passed South Florida, the slow creeping storm surge, combined with the seasonal high tides, has shut down A1A along the coast from Bayshore to East 20th Street. "Last night," said a woman, "we figured the storm was farther away, and all of the sudden, sure enough, it's worse than it was the night before."

Inland, in lowland places like Victoria Park, the ocean has caused flooding, as well. Workers do not expect surge flooding to be as bad Monday night as it was during the last few days. If that's true, then they hope to have A1A open again by Wednesday.

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