Between dusk Thursday and dawn on Friday, Hurricane Helene laid bare the naked vulnerability of the Tampa Bay region in the face of high water.
It wasn’t even close to a direct hit.
Helene’s center passed no nearer than 100 miles off the coast of Pinellas County, but the enormous hurricane pushed ashore record storm surge ravaging coastal homes and businesses and flooding low-lying neighborhoods beyond any storm in memory.
At least 44 people died across the Southeast, a number still taking shape late Friday as crews assessed the catastrophic damage of an “unsurvivable” storm surge topping 15 feet and 140 mph winds that made landfall near Perry, the crook where Florida’s Big Bend becomes the Panhandle. The system was so massive it impacted more than 20 states at once Friday afternoon, many of them under flash flood watches.
Among those killed were three firefighters, a woman and her 1-month-old twins, and an 89-year-old woman whose house was struck by a falling tree. According to an Associated Press tally, the deaths occurred in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
At least five people died in Pinellas County, officials said, two in Treasure Island, two in Indian Rocks Beach and one in Dunedin. Two drowned. The other fatalities were being investigated. The first announced death came near Ybor City after a toppled exit sign on Interstate 4 crushed a Honda Odyssey, killing a 23-year-old Gibsonton man who was one of four passengers.
Locally, Pinellas’ barrier islands and beach towns sustained the hardest hits, the National Weather Service’s Tampa Bay office said. Sand piled along Gulf Boulevard looked like snowbanks, created by the 8 feet of surge. Boats were dragged ashore into downtown Gulfport, parked next to ruined homes and businesses.
The storm left Tampa Bay grappling with a dual reality: the region may have just experienced its most destructive storm on record and yet was also clearly lucky. A direct hit would have been catastrophic.
“It’s the worst flooding Gulfport has ever had — in the more than 100 years we’ve been a town,” said Gulfport events supervisor Justin Shea, who was shaking his head in front of the historic Gulfport Casino, where water had climbed the seven stairs and spilled into the ballroom.
More than 1,000 people were rescued by first responders across Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough counties. Pinellas County logged 7,000 hurricane-related 911 calls, but Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said high water had prevented rescuers from responding immediately.
All five who died in Pinellas were in neighborhoods where residents were told to evacuate, Gualtieri said. Some who stayed ended up having to hide in their attics to escape the rising water.
“We had issued the mandatory evacuation orders. Not everybody evacuated,” Gualtieri said. “And unfortunately they called for help, and unfortunately we couldn’t help a lot of the people who called as those conditions got very bad last night.”
At Harbor Lights Club mobile home park in Pinellas County’s Bay Pines community, Nancy Parker sat on her dining table as water rushed in. “At one point I starting calling people asking if they could come rescue us in a kayak,” she said. “They thought I was kidding, but what else were we going to do?”
In St. Petersburg, Mayor Ken Welch reported that 70 people were rescued during the storm. Search and rescue efforts continued Friday in Venetian Isles, Snell Isle and Shore Acres where flooding was extensive. St. Petersburg experienced more than 6 feet of surge, according to the city, and more than 100 miles of flooded roads.
In Shore Acres, homes were tied together by a devastating string — waterlines at least 4 feet high marking low-level homes. “If you want to stand outside and scream, it’s OK,” Kevin Batdorf, the president of the Shore Acres Civic Association, wrote on the neighborhood’s Facebook group. “We understand.”
Across the bay in Tampa, standing water covered the streets of Davis Islands even after the sun rose and the surge elsewhere had receded. The neighborhood took “extensive damage,” according to Tampa Mayor Jane Castor. She flew over the city in a helicopter Friday and said the area was “basically still underwater.” She expected it would be for some time. Two houses there caught fire.
Bridges onto Davis Islands were closed Friday, so resident Sam Cochrane, 26, walked home. He’d evacuated, and didn’t know what to expect when he got back. He looked down at the two soaked towels he had placed against his door to block water. He took off his shoes, stepped inside and found his feet submerged.
“It’s not like the warning wasn’t really there,” he said. “I think everyone’s like, we’ll be fine, you know, because it hasn’t happened before. So I think a lot of people are probably like, I’ve lived here 40, 50 years, it’s never happened, so you know, this time will be fine too.”
Faith Pilafas, 24, works at Davis Islands Coffee Bar and lives nearby. She also surveyed the damage Friday.
“I mean, just every single business is, like, totally destroyed,” she said. “But we don’t know anybody who is seriously injured, and so we’re just really grateful that didn’t happen.”
Nearby on the island, sailboats were smashed together along a bend in the sea wall. One of the sailboats sat perched atop the wall, fully out of the water. The boat’s name: Blown Away.
No one ever gets used to flooding, but it has become a fact of life in places like St. Petersburg’s Shore Acres and rural Hillsborough County around the Alafia River. But with Helene’s surge reaching new areas, people said they were stunned. Decades-long residents of South Tampa, who said they’d never flooded before, were inundated, even near the center of the area’s peninsula.
Sandy Moore was getting ready for bed when water began pouring into her home on Euclid Avenue east of West Shore Boulevard. On Friday it was gone, but her carpets and floorboards were soaked.
“I’ve lived in Tampa practically all my life, for decades, Beach Park, Davis Islands,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like this. On the other side of West Shore, people I know had like 4 feet in their house.”
In eastern Hillsborough County, where the Alafia River reached a record 9.4 feet, Chris Berry rode out the storm at his riverfront home to keep an eye on things after his family evacuated.
The rising floodwaters came out of the dark and seemed like they would never stop. After midnight, he and his son jumped into a canoe to seek higher ground. As they paddled out, they swatted away spiders and roaches and other bugs seeking dry land.
“Every bug in the ground is trying to get away and they’re scrambling on you,” he said. “It’s the most disgusting thing in the world.”
Berry’s partner, Nadine Clark, who is a hairstylist, said it may be time to move after 17 years. She’s tired of the flooding. “I don’t want to do this again,” she said.
Around 332,000 utility customers were still without power in Florida by 8:30 p.m. Friday, including around 140,000 Duke Energy customers in Pinellas County and 32,000 Tampa Electric customers, down from about 1 million statewide earlier in the day. Flooding was the biggest issue preventing repairs, but crews also reported many wires and trees down, a TECO spokesperson said.
Pinellas County Utilities issued a boil water notice for barrier island customers from John’s Pass to Fort De Soto Park, including St. Pete Beach, Treasure Island and Tierra Verde. If there is no way to boil water, residents were told to add an eighth of a teaspoon, or about eight drops of unscented bleach per gallon of water, stir well and let stand for 30 minutes before using.
In northeast St. Petersburg, 25% of the city’s residents, many of whom were not told to evacuate, could not flush the toilet, shower or put anything down the drain all day Friday, after the Northeast Water Reclamation Facility was inundated with 7 feet of storm surge and had to be shut down. Late Friday evening, the city said residents could resume draining water at midnight. Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday he’d make state resources available to city officials in St. Petersburg to help the city with the sewage problem.
Bridges across Tampa Bay stood closed for nearly 24 hours. Late Friday evening, the Courtney Campbell Causeway was the last of the major bridges to reopen, but Pinellas County’s barrier islands were still shuttered to traffic.
On Friday afternoon, as drivers sat in standstill traffic on the Gandy Bridge, one of the only ways for evacuees to return to Pinellas County, a billboard above them presented a paradox. It read, “Life is better on the water!”
Jack Prator, Dan Sullivan, Emily L. Mahoney, Tracey McManus, Michaela Mulligan, Lauren Peace, Ian Hodgson, Zachary T. Sampson, Teghan Simonton, Shauna Muckle, Hannah Critchfield, Colleen Wright, Olivia George and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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