VERO BEACH - Morning came Sunday and the winds of Hurricane Frances continued to rip across Indian River County without letup.
Through the night, winds of 90-100 mph toppled trees, ripped aluminum awnings from buildings and pushed water from the Indian River into city streets. At dawn, the wind continued.
Indian River County's emergency management coordinator Nathan McCollum said at 10 a.m. that he had received no word of injuries or of people trapped anywhere in the county. The four Red Cross shelters sustained no damage, and the earliest patrols found lots of cosmetic damage, but no serious structure problems.
East of U.S. 1 to the Indian River - the local name for the Intracoastal Waterway - streets were flooded with more than a foot of water, the road to the river was impassable. McCollum said street flooding is common in the area and did not appear to be soaking homes.
"As far as wind issues vs. building codes versus structures, the structures fared very well," McCollum said.
The streets were littered with downed trees, power lines, business signs, shingles and tar paper, but McCollum said the county survived better than counties to the south. He said there is no need for federal housing help and there did not appear to be a significant number of residents displaced.
Electricity to most of the county has been out since Saturday morning. The areas that still had power went dark by 8 p.m. Saturday in a series of spectacular, blue explosions as transformers blew. By Sunday morning, water service across the county was out, and county health officials put out a boil-water order for whenever water service returned.
McCollum said at 10 a.m. there were no reports from the county's beachside community. Sheriff's deputies would venture onto the island once the winds dropped.
Sheriff's Office Detective Joe Flescher said about 300 National Guard troops were on their way to the county to aid in security and communications.
About 4 inches of rain fell overnight in Vero Beach. Usually the city's drainage system has no problem with that amount of water, but McCollum said debris had clogged drains, causing some flooding. Once city crews could get out and clear the drains, the water should recede, he said.
Dodgertown, the spring home for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, sustained no damage in the storm, McCollum said.
