Passengers stranded at FLL as flooding closes airport

certainly, we are all hands on deck and we are going to Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport, it is expected to reopen. It was expected to reopen at noon after the

flooding

, but that is simply not the case. Our first local 10 News side joins us. live from the

airport

with a very important update so this

airport

will not be reopening at any time today that is the latest update they expect it to open tomorrow at 5am. and it was always kind of an illusion for today yesterday afternoon when they closed the airport they said it might open today at noon that didn't happen, you can see there's still a lot of water on the runway, it's receded a little bit from what we saw early this morning , we got here uh just before 5 a.m. m., but it does not retreat fast enough for planes to take off or land safely on this runway.

We take a look at this video. Now we saw all those flight cancellations this morning. We saw some delays. Some airlines hope to do so. They will take off their planes this afternoon, but unfortunately they will not be able to take off at any time. This afternoon we saw many people camped in the terminals and they are slowly leaving those terminals as the news spreads that their flights are canceled for today, hopefully they will be able to catch flights tomorrow. Many travelers we spoke to said they plan to rebook outside of M.I.A because Miami is not affected by these

flooding

.

I spoke to some travelers about their plans a little earlier this morning. and some of them had some wishful thinking, now you can hear from them what your airline has told you, when your flight can take off, oh that sent me an email saying we can take off at one, so I hope we can still go. outside at one o'clock looking at the water on the asphalt you think you're going to be able to get out at one o'clock I don't think so it's too much water so I hope we can get out but you know it's a lot of water right now thank you breaking hope for that bachelor party with the that we talked about today that I was hoping to get to Colombia today that's not happening at least not from FLL maybe they'll have better luck with M.I.A again they hope to get airport operations back up and running tomorrow morning but it all depends on how fast it goes back the water, the county mayor spoke to us this morning and said that the airport has a pumping mechanism and that may be working because the water is just not receding very quickly, so again I hope to reopen tomorrow morning, but again , this is a wait and see situation, this is unprecedented, we have not had this much water before, we have had flooding situations, but not to the point where we have had an airport closure for several days again this Closure began yesterday around 4 p.m. m.

I can't reopen today, they'll reopen tomorrow morning, we'll be here watching how things go to keep you updated, so stay with us for the latest, but that's the latest. is live outside FLL Cyra onwards, local news 10 and it's really unprecedented to see so much water on the runway, we know that when a tropical storm or hurricane hits we see the ground stop mainly due to the wind, but to see the water like this. and Cyra, you know last night a lot of people were tweeting and texting saying they couldn't even leave the airport because even the roads leading to the airport were flooded.

Did you at least get to see some of those people who were

stranded

and were able to at least go home since their flights were cancelled. Yes, Denise, we are not seeing that jammed traffic in the departure or arrival area that we saw last night. We heard of people taking two hours to leave the terminals yesterday. Because it was so bad, there were cars idling on the airport roads. BSO had to come help them. Those roads are now clear. You can go through the departure lane and pick people up. It seems that they are arrivals, since we have seen cars passing by. the arrivals lane as well, even though they didn't announce the reopening, I've seen cars passing through the lower level two of the airport here, so I don't see that intense congestion that we saw last night, but many of the roads in Hollywood Dania Beach.

The area where the airport is is still impassable, so people were really weighing their options today: do I stay at the airport and wait for it to pass or do someone come pick me up and make a potentially dangerous hike here, but now that we know that the flights will not take off this afternoon. More and more people decide to leave the airport, understandably, because of what seems like a lake behind you. It's crazy to watch that video.