Skies are sunny and roads are dry in South Florida a week after a king tide wrecked commutes (and cars) along the coast. But plenty of residents are still dealing with a lesser known side effect of all that flooding: elevator issues.
 

When saltwater surges inland, especially when boosted by heavy rain, all that water pools in places it shouldn’t — including the bottom of elevator shafts in high-rises. That can lead to bouts of king tide-induced confinement for folks who can’t take the stairs. On Monday, some elderly residents of a South Beach condominium were finally free to leave their homes after floodwaters knocked out their elevators for more than a week. Repair workers fixed one of the building’s two elevators late in the afternoon. Most inhabitants of 10-story Lincoln Bay Towers just schlepped up and down the stairs to go about their daily lives, but that was impossible for some older residents. Association president Nancy Duke said her 87-year-old husband, Bobby, hadn’t left their unit since floodwaters submerged the building’s parking lot, garage, pump station, lower lobby and elevators on Sept. 27. It was a long week with some residents “stranded in their apartments,” she told the Miami Herald. “We have people buying groceries for their neighbors because they can’t get out.” And while this hadn’t happened to the residents of Lincoln Bay before, it’s not a rare issue in South Florida, said Stephen Gill, founder of Flood Risk America. His company specializes in floodproofing, including elevators, and he estimates his firm has worked on more than a thousand elevators nationwide, especially in flood-prone Florida.

Technician Lazaro Romeu Jr., with Elevator Service Corporation, checks the elevator room at the Lincoln Bay Towers condominium building where the elevators were damaged after water from king tide flooded the pits, leaving residents stuck in the apartments, on Monday, Oct. 5, 2026.

 

“It’s very common. It can be up to $250,000 or more to fix those elevators because the cables get rusted,” he said. “It’s very costly.”

Plenty of elevators are designed to respond to water intrusions. At Lincoln Bay, Duke said their elevators sensed water and immediately went to the 10th floor, where they were locked in place and unusable until contractors cleared out the pit below.

But some older elevators are lower tech, which can put residents in risky situations.

 

Last April, residents of the Vendome Place Condominium in Miami Beach were inside the elevator with the doors closed when floodwaters rushed in, NBC6 reported. One man was able to wrench the doors open and allow everyone inside to escape into the waist-high floodwaters in their parking garage, surveillance video showed.

A surge of floodwater

Higher-than-high tides plus a deluge of rain last week led to days of flooding across South Florida. It was the worst flooding Duke said the condo has seen in a decade, worse than the storm surge it endured from 2017’s Hurricane Irma.

Tide gauges showed the ocean was nearly two feet higher than normal, but this was still two feet below the high water mark set by Irma in Miami-Dade. The addition of several inches of rain took this flood from something that might have swamped a parking lot to a genuine disaster for the residents of Lincoln Bay.

Duke was worried about the safety of less mobile residents, like her husband. Sunday night, she says, fire rescue showed up at the condo to see someone. But the stretcher-toting workers were quickly informed that their only transportation option was to hoof it up several stories.

“Somebody hollered, one of the guys from his terrace, that there’s no elevators,” Duke said. “They were very upset.”

Miami Beach spokesperson Melissa Berthier told the Herald the call was for a knee injury, and after units arrived the caller said they were fine. Fire rescue didn’t transport anyone.
Repairs on the zapped elevators were delayed for days while the floodwaters receded. On Monday, workers hauled out a 200-pound piece of equipment that was ruined by the saltwater and sand carried in on the high tides. By the afternoon, they restored power to one of the elevators, but it’s still not floodproofed, and the other elevator is still down.

More flooding is in the forecast for this weekend as king tides ramp up again. The plan is to armor the place with sandbags until more thorough repairs can be completed.

“We’re just hoping it holds up,” Duke said.

‘It has been a nightmare’

Across the street from Lincoln Bay, floodwater poured “like a waterfall” into the garage of Sunshine Bay Condominiums on that same day of flooding. Like their neighbors, Sunshine Bay also lost their elevators — as well as power to the entire building.

“It has been a nightmare,” said longtime resident Valerie Navarrete.

Electricity was restored to most units within a few days, she said. But at least one unit, as well as the common areas, are waiting on some internal fixes and a city permit approval before the lights can be switched back on. The elevators are still out, a nuisance to those who live in the 4-story building, but Navarrete said they fared better than their neighbors at Lincoln Bay.

Losing power was especially painful for Sunshine Bay because the underground parking garage relies on a hardwired stormwater pump to keep the garage dry when the streets start to flood. With no electricity, the garage quickly became submerged with several feet of water.

Navarrete, who lost her car to a similar flood six years ago, said this time residents knew what was coming. The day of the storm, she stood in the courtyard of her condo and warned her neighbors.

“I was screaming, ‘move your cars! move your cars!,” she said. Other neighbors knocked on doors of anyone with a vehicle still in danger. Thanks to their efforts, only one car, two Vespas and a motorcycle perished in this flood, Navarrete said.

Her Monday started at 5 a.m. when a neighbor woke her to take her turn babysitting the temporary pump the residents banded together to buy to help dry out the garage. As for the elevators, Navarrete assumed they’re ruined, too. The whole area has been soaked for a week straight.

With more king tide flooding on the way and rain on the forecast, Navarrete said her association is working with the city to get sandbags in place ahead of the next king tide. But the real fix is still months away, when the city finishes the longtime West Avenue drainage project that will redirect that water that submerged her garage into city pumps and pipes instead.

“We just have to suck it up until next year when it’s done,” Navarrete said.