Current:Home > MyFlorida communities hit three times by hurricanes grapple with how and whether to rebuild -WealthSync Hub
Florida communities hit three times by hurricanes grapple with how and whether to rebuild
View
Date:2025-04-13 18:43:04
HORSESHOE BEACH, Fla. (AP) — It was just a month ago that Brooke Hiers left the state-issued emergency trailer where her family had lived since Hurricane Idalia slammed into her Gulf Coast fishing village of Horseshoe Beach in August 2023.
Hiers and her husband Clint were still finishing the electrical work in the home they painstakingly rebuilt themselves, wiping out Clint’s savings to do so. They never will finish that wiring job.
Hurricane Helene blew their newly renovated home off its four foot-high pilings, sending it floating into the neighbor’s yard next door.
“You always think, ‘Oh, there’s no way it can happen again’,” Hiers said. “I don’t know if anybody’s ever experienced this in the history of hurricanes.”
For the third time in 13 months, this windswept stretch of Florida’s Big Bend took a direct hit from a hurricane — a one-two-three punch to a 50-mile (80-kilometer) sliver of the state’s more than 8,400 miles (13,500 kilometers) of coastline, first by Idalia, then Category 1 Hurricane Debby in August 2024 and now Helene.
Hiers, who sits on Horseshoe Beach’s town council, said words like “unbelievable” are beginning to lose their meaning.
“I’ve tried to use them all. Catastrophic. Devastating. Heartbreaking … none of that explains what happened here,” Hiers said.
The back-to-back hits to Florida’s Big Bend are forcing residents to reckon with the true costs of living in an area under siege by storms that researchers say are becoming stronger because of climate change.
The Hiers, like many others here, can’t afford homeowner’s insurance on their flood-prone houses, even if it was available. Residents who have watched their life savings get washed away multiple times are left with few choices — leave the communities where their families have lived for generations, pay tens of thousands of dollars to rebuild their houses on stilts as building codes require, or move into a recreational vehicle they can drive out of harm’s way.
That’s if they can afford any of those things. The storm left many residents bunking with family or friends, sleeping in their cars, or sheltering in what’s left of their collapsing homes.
Janalea England wasn’t waiting for outside organizations to get aid to her friends and neighbors, turning her commercial fish market in the river town of Steinhatchee into a pop-up donation distribution center, just like she did after Hurricane Idalia. A row of folding tables was stacked with water, canned food, diapers, soap, clothes and shoes, a steady stream of residents coming and going.
“I’ve never seen so many people homeless as what I have right now. Not in my community,” England said. “They have nowhere to go.”
‘It’s just gone’
The sparsely populated Big Bend is known for its towering pine forests and pristine salt marshes that disappear into the horizon, a remote stretch of largely undeveloped coastline that’s mostly dodged the crush of condos, golf courses and souvenir strip malls that has carved up so much of the Sunshine State.
This is a place where teachers, mill workers and housekeepers could still afford to live within walking distance of the Gulf’s white sand beaches. Or at least they used to, until a third successive hurricane blew their homes apart.
Helene was so destructive, many residents don’t have a home left to clean up, escaping the storm with little more than the clothes on their backs, even losing their shoes to the surging tides.
“People didn’t even have a Christmas ornament to pick up or a plate from their kitchen,” Hiers said. “It was just gone.”
In a place where people are trying to get away from what they see as government interference, England, who organized her own donation site, isn’t putting her faith in government agencies and insurance companies.
“FEMA didn’t do much,” she said. “They lost everything with Idalia and they were told, ‘here, you can have a loan.’ I mean, where’s our tax money going then?”
England’s sister, Lorraine Davis, got a letter in the mail just days before Helene hit declaring that her insurance company was dropping her, with no explanation other than her home “fails to meet underwriting”.
Living on a fixed income, Davis has no idea how she’ll repair the long cracks that opened up in the ceiling of her trailer after the last storm.
“We’ll all be on our own,” England said. “We’re used to it.”
‘This could be the end of your town’
In the surreal aftermath of this third hurricane, some residents don’t have the strength to clean up their homes again, not with other storms still brewing in the Gulf.
With marinas washed away, restaurants collapsed and vacation homes blown apart, many commercial fishermen, servers and housecleaners lost their homes and their jobs on the same day.
Those who worked at the local sawmill and paper mill, two bedrock employers in the area, were laid off in the past year too. Now a convoy of semi-trucks full of hurricane relief supplies have set up camp at the shuttered mill in the city of Perry.
Hud Lilliott was a mill worker for 28 years, before losing his job and now his canal-front home in Dekle Beach, just down the street from the house where he grew up.
Lilliott and his wife Laurie hope to rebuild their house there, but they don’t know how they’ll pay for it. And they’re worried the school in Steinhatchee where Laurie teaches first grade could become another casualty of the storm, as the county watches its tax base float away.
“We’ve worked our whole lives and we’re so close to where they say the ‘golden years’,” Laurie said. “It’s like you can see the light and it all goes dark.”
Dave Beamer rebuilt his home in Steinhatchee after it was “totaled” by Hurricane Idalia, only to see it washed into the marsh a year later.
“I don’t think I can do that again,” Beamer said. “Everybody’s changing their mind about how we’re going to live here.”
A waterlogged clock in a shed nearby shows the moment when time stopped, marking before Helene and after.
Beamer plans to stay in this river town, but put his home on wheels — buying a camper and building a pole barn to park it under.
In Horseshoe Beach, Hiers is waiting for a makeshift town hall to be delivered in the coming days, a double-wide trailer where they’ll offer what services they can for as long as they can. She and her husband are staying with their daughter, a 45-minute drive away.
“You feel like this could be the end of things as you knew it. Of your town. Of your community,” Hiers said. “We just don’t even know how to recover at this point.”
Hiers said she and her husband will probably buy an RV and park it where their home once stood. But they won’t be moving back to Horseshoe Beach for good until this year’s storms are done. They can’t bear to do this again.
___ Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
veryGood! (7)
Related
- House passes bill to add 66 new federal judgeships, but prospects murky after Biden veto threat
- The price of gold keeps climbing to unprecedented heights. Here’s why
- Travis James Mullis executed in Texas for murder of his 3-month-old son Alijah: 'I'm ready'
- First US high school with an all-basketball curriculum names court after Knicks’ Julius Randle
- South Korea's acting president moves to reassure allies, calm markets after Yoon impeachment
- It's a new world for college football players: You want the NIL cash? Take the criticism.
- Off the Grid: Sally breaks down USA TODAY's daily crossword puzzle, Ego Trip
- First US high school with an all-basketball curriculum names court after Knicks’ Julius Randle
- IRS recovers $4.7 billion in back taxes and braces for cuts with Trump and GOP in power
- Crazy Town frontman Shifty Shellshock's cause of death revealed
Ranking
- A South Texas lawmaker’s 15
- Maryland files lawsuit against cargo ship owners in Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse
- Trump says Ukraine is ‘dead’ and dismisses its defense against Russia’s invasion
- OpenAI exec Mira Murati says she’s leaving artificial intelligence company
- Have Dry, Sensitive Skin? You Need To Add These Gentle Skincare Products to Your Routine
- 1969 Dodge Daytona Hemi V8 breaks auction record with $3.3 million bid
- Jenn Sterger comments on Brett Favre's diagnosis: 'Karma never forgets an address'
- Off the Grid: Sally breaks down USA TODAY's daily crossword puzzle, Ego Trip
Recommendation
Intel's stock did something it hasn't done since 2022
Will Young Voters’ Initial Excitement for Harris Build Enough Momentum to Get Them to the Polls?
‘System of privilege’: How well-connected students get Mississippi State’s best dorms
Secret Service failures before Trump rally shooting were ‘preventable,’ Senate panel finds
North Carolina trustees approve Bill Belichick’s deal ahead of introductory news conference
After Marcellus Williams is executed in Missouri, a nation reacts
Colorado man’s malicious prosecution lawsuit over charges in his wife’s death was dismissed
Dancing With the Stars’ Danny Amendola Sets Record Straight on Xandra Pohl Dating Rumors