ORLANDO, Fla. — One of the areas hit hardest in Central Florida by flooding after Hurricane Ian was in East Orange County, in several areas along Rouse Road near the University of Central Florida. Many homeowners there are still on the road to recovery, repairing their homes after flooding caused by Ian eight months ago. 

With the start of the rainy season, some homeowners in the area said they already see retention ponds and other bodies of water beginning to rise again, and that has them worried.

Ion, a homeowner in the Rivers Pointe subdivision, said in the hours after Hurricane Ian moved through last fall, his neighborhood was under waist-deep water.

“Everything was water," Ion said. "You could not drive with a car.”

That left his wife and nearly 1-year-old twin sons with only one way out of their home — a rescue boat.

“The boat pulled over here, and we got out through this window,” Ion said. “It was just like in the movies. It was shocking. I don’t think we even realized what was happening.”

Even after Federal Emergency Management Administration help and donations from the community, damages from the flooding have cost his family more than $40,000 to rebuild much of their home and replace everything they lost, Ion said. It’s an experience that still haunts his family.

“We’re still not back to normal,” Ion said. “I’ll be fully transparent with you. Basically, we have dreams that the water is coming into the house.”

The flooding caught his family especially off-guard because he said the area his neighborhood is in isn’t supposed to flood.

“Since the neighborhood was built in 1999, nothing even close to this happened, so it is strange,” he said.

He said he’s hoping county leaders are taking steps now to make sure stormwater infrastructure is ready for what Mother Nature might unleash in the next few months.

“If we get a hurricane, then it’s absolutely concerning, so we’ll see how that develops,” Ion said. “But I think the most important thing right now is to inspect the drainage system.”

Ion and his neighbors said they believe some stormwater infrastructure improvements were made in the area in the weeks after Hurricane Ian. 

Spectrum News reached out to Orange County government officials to see what measures the county is taking to prevent future flooding in the area. County officials directed questions to the county’s Stormwater Management Division, which said it is working to respond.