When the choppy surf and storms died down and floodwaters receded from Hurricane Idalia, Bradenton Beach officials began assessing damages, including at the Historic Bridge Street Pier, which was battered by boats.
Idalia made landfall at 7:45 a.m. Aug. 30 along the Big Bend coast near Keaton Beach as a category 3 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds near 125 mph.
Manatee County saw impacts from Idalia as the storm advanced in the Gulf of Mexico Aug. 29-30, skimming the coastline about 100 miles offshore, with the most intense wind overnight but floodwaters and rain into the afternoon Aug. 30.
Ahead of Idalia, the county issued a mandatory evacuation for level A communities — including all of Anna Maria Island.
Police Chief John Cosby said Aug. 31 that there were no injuries or power outages in the city but there were reports of minor flooding, including in the Pines Trailer Park, 103 Church Ave. Some mobile homes were flooded by a storm surge that pushed up the predicted king tides.
In the commercial district, Cosby said there were no reports of flooding.
Fred Bartizal, owner of The Bridgetender Inn & Dockside Bar, 135 Bridge St., and Commissioner Jake Spooner, owner of the Bridge Street Bazaar, Fish Hole Miniature Golf and the building that houses the Daiquiri Deck, 107 Bridge St, confirmed no water intrusion at their establishments.
“We were very fortunate,” Spooner texted Aug. 30 to The Islander. “All the businesses are dry.”
The Moose Lodge, at the west end of Bridge Street on the Gulf of Mexico, was inundated with sand on its beachfront patio.
Sand covered Gulf Drive and roadways between 11th and 13th Streets South the day after the storm’s brush with AMI.
The bayside roads — already closed to traffic for a county construction project— were left with sand but Gulf Drive was cleared.
To the north, at Sandpiper Mobile Resort, 2601 Gulf Drive N., community manager Tracy Moon Aug. 31 said no floodwaters entered homes and there were no reports of wind damage.
“We really did very well. We have some seaweed that washed into the streets and some storm debris from the bay but, all in all, we did great,” Moon said.
The most noticeable damage was at the Historic Bridge Street Pier, 200 Bridge St., which was battered by six boats.
“The finger piers and the floating docks sustained damage, not from the storm but from vessels that tied to the floating dock,” city attorney Ricinda Perry told The Islander Aug. 31. “A number of them were not tied properly.”
She said people tied boats to the pier’s bumper and sections of the floating dock but the pier was not designed to withstand the load of a boat through a hurricane.
Perry said the pier looked bad but the damage was more of a repair issue than a replacement issue.
“We are conducting an investigation to figure out who the owners are, whether or not they are insured and then what if any legal recourses the city will have against all those individuals,” she said.
Duncan Seawall was expected to produce a repair estimate and mobilize as early as this week for repairs.
The pier which opened in 1965 has been repaired and renovated numerous times. Most recently, the city expanded its finger docks to serve as a landing site for Manatee County’s planned water taxi program.
Perry said she would speak with Elliott Falcione, executive director of the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, about the pier damage. Falcione has headed up the water taxi initiative.
“I don’t anticipate this causing a delay because the tourist development council needs to have a ramp manufactured for the water taxi for individuals to get on and off and that was at least 30 days out from being manufactured,” Perry said.
County public information officer Bill Logan, in an Aug. 31 email, said the county was conducting post-storm assessments.
Countywide, an early estimate of damages exceeded $2.3 million.
Sign up for The Islander’s news alerts for coverage of hurricanes and tropical storms. Also, follow The Islander’s social media pages, especially Facebook.