Helene's catastrophic storm surge floods Gulf Coast communities

ORLANDO, Fla. — Flooded communities up and down Florida’s Gulf Coast began their long recovery on Friday, after a colossal Hurricane Helene — packing the punch of 140 mph winds — caused a catastrophic storm surge that inundated large swaths of the state between Pensacola and Fort Myers Beach.

“It was really a historic storm surge in different parts of the state,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis at a Friday morning press briefing in Tallahassee.

Some areas of Florida’s Big Bend saw a rise in seawater levels of up to 20 feet from the Category 4 storm, double the height of a basketball rim. At least seven people have been killed, with another 30 perishing beyond Florida as Helene continued its deadly journey.

In the community of Steinhatchee, located in Taylor County where the storm came ashore, Helene dismantled homes and businesses and flooded roads.

In St. Petersburg, which the hurricane and its astonishing 350-mile wind field sped past on its course through the Gulf, water levels reached the top of street signs in the low-lying Shore Acres community.

At the city’s Albert Whitted Airport, flood waters peaked at 6.3 feet above an average high tide, more than 2 feet higher than after last year’s Hurricane Idalia. Every major bridge in St. Petersburg and Tampa was closed, at least for a time. Beaches including popular Clearwater Beach “looked like a warzone,” the Pinellas County Sheriff said.

The Tampa Bay Times reported that damage to the city’s water treatment plant had left 25 percent of its population unable to flush the toilet for at least 48 hours.

Helene also toppled trees and power lines and tore roofs off buildings as it moved north through Florida, leaving a path of destruction. As of 3:30 pm Friday, 775,000 people remained without power in Florida, with 1.2 million in similar straits in South Carolina and roughly 900,000 each in Georgia and North Carolina, according to poweroutage.us.

In the small city of Monticello, about 27 miles east of Tallahassee, Joanne Barker, owner of Keystone Insurance, was in her office — a chair propping open the door — taking calls from her clients reporting damage from Hurricane Helene on Friday afternoon. One had a tree fall on the roof of their house, while another had a tree land on their pole barn.

“I have no power, but the roof is still on, and the roof at home is still on, so all is good,” said Barker, adding that as long as she was able to help her customers she was going to keep working. “You do what you can do for your neighbors.”

Ashley McCollum decided to evacuate from the mobile home her family has been renting for 10 years just east of Monticello.

“Something kept telling me and my dad and my husband to get out,” she said.

They spent the night at a hotel in Tallahassee. When they returned home Friday morning, two large pine trees had destroyed their mobile home.

Her landlord said that he will ask the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assess the damage. McCollum and her family were able to get some clothing from the damaged trailer, but had to leave behind most of their belongings.

She and her husband can stay with her brother for a little while. “Hopefully FEMA and the Salvation Army can help,” McCollum said. “It’s gonna be rough, but we will make it.”

Helene’s storm surge flooded San Marco Island and North Fort Myers Beach in southwest Florida by 9 p.m. Thursday, about two hours before the storm slammed into Dekle Beach in the Big Bend region.

Hours later, communities all along the Gulf Coast watched the water rise.

Edwin Sprague plowed his way through hip-deep flood waters in khaki shorts and canvas shoes on Thursday night to reach his home in the Edgemoore neighborhood of St. Petersburg after leaving his truck on higher ground, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

By 1 a.m. Friday, a wall of water rushed into his house, lifting the kitchen floor, flooding their garage and causing their furniture to float room to room.

“Everything is ruined. It’s unbelievable,” said Kala Sprague, Edwin’s ex-wife who lives with him.

In Gulfport, in Pinellas County, the small seaside town’s downtown district was awash with debris from tidal flooding.

“We saw storm surges in many parts of the west coast of Florida that exceeded what we saw in Hurricane Idalia, which took a similar track [in August 2023], was similar in strength, maybe a little bit weaker,” DeSantis said.

Fortunately, DeSantis said, Helene jogged several miles east late Thursday from its anticipated forecast path. The storm slamming into the lesser populated area thereby spared Tallahassee — the state’s capital with more than 200,000 residents — the worst of the Category 4 hurricane’s destruction.

“We really dodged a bullet,” said Jackie Skelding, owner of the Rare Bird, an antique shop in Tallahassee.

In preparation for the storm, she had covered most items with plastic and moved furniture away from her wall-sized glass garage doors. She also placed sandbags where she knew water could get in and placed buckets under known roof leaks.

“I’d been preparing since Wednesday, expecting a direct hit,” Skelding said. “If it hadn’t shifted east…we might not be standing here in this shop.”

A couple of factors were responsible for the hurricane veering east. Most powerful was an incoming cold front that affected the upper level flow of the storm, said Gerald Worster, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. The cold front accelerated and pushed the storm eastward.

The highest gust reported by the National Weather in Tallahassee was 67 mph at the city’s international airport just after midnight Friday. In the Orlando area, wind gusts reached just above 50 mph.

Across the state, more than 2.5 million customers lost power at some point during Helene’s intensification and trek northward that began as a tropical storm near Cancun on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday.

In Central Florida, more than 38,000 customers were reported to have lost electricity during the storm, according to the poweroutage.us site.

In Orange County, Mayor Jerry Demings said there was minimal damage and no reported flooding caused by Helene.

“We realize we had low rainfall. We were blessed in that way,” he said. “But we did see a number of trees down.”

Two deaths were attributed to Helene Friday morning. Those included a fatality in Florida’s Panhandle after a tree fell on a home in the Panhandle. The other person was killed when a sign fell on their car on Interstate 4 in Tampa.

“I pray that’s it,” DeSantis said at a mid-morning press conference. He did not get that wish: Five people were later reported dead in Pinellas County.

Big Bend communities in recent months have seen more than their horrific share of destructive storms, DeSantis pointed out.

Helene followed a similar path as this year’s Hurricane Debby — a slow-moving hurricane that caused widespread flooding throughout the Southeast after making landfall in August near Steinhatchee.

And just over a year ago, Hurricane Idalia — a major hurricane — with sustained winds of 115 mph slammed into the Florida coast in August 2023 at nearly the same spot as Helene.

Early damage reports from Helene as of Friday morning, “has exceeded Idalia and Debby combined,” DeSantis said during the press briefing.

“This is the third storm that they’ve [in the Big Bend] dealt with in 13 months. And that’s not easy to deal with,” he said. “When you’ve already been rebuilding from one and then this happens, that takes a toll, I think, emotionally and mentally as well.”

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