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‘Overwhelming’ destruction in a Florida city

‘Overwhelming’ destruction in a Florida city

Vaseline 2 months ago

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STEINHATCHEE, Fla. – For nearly two decades, Scott Peters poured his heart and soul into his Crabbie Dad’s bar, just across the Steinhatchee River on the coast of Florida’s Big Bend.

He has weathered storms and floods, the ups and downs of the tourism industry, the economy in general and pretty much everything the world has to throw at him. And hurricanes have been a reality for a long time – and usually mild enough to occur in cities.

Locals hosted hurricane parties, cracking open beer and challenging the wind. But after Hurricane Hermine devastated the town he calls home in 2016, they started taking the storms more seriously.

“We are essentially at sea level,” Peters said Wednesday.

That was before Hurricane Helene roared ashore, pushing a wall of water. Helene’s eye hit the shore a few miles away, and Steinhatchee was hit perhaps harder than anywhere else.

And Peters’ bar was perhaps hit the hardest.

He rode out the storm in Gainesville, about 70 miles away, and hadn’t gotten home yet to assess the damage.

His friends and neighbors texted him photos and videos of the bar, but he feared the small bridge to his house was gone, and perhaps the house itself.

“It’s total devastation,” he said by phone Friday, as sheriff’s deputies blocked access to the city. “I have to start all over again.”

Helene pushed a wall of water estimated to be at least ten feet high into the lowest areas of Steinhatchee, including where the bar sat. The iconic sign is gone and only a few of the dollar bills that were once attached to the rafters were left to blow in the wind.

Also gone are the pieces of plywood that were carefully but hastily attached over the windows. And the windows are gone too. And the cheerful peach-colored walls. What mainly remains are the concrete steps and the rear terrace, and the partially collapsed tile floor.

“This is overwhelming,” Steinhatchee resident Jamie Lee said as she surveyed the damage. “I don’t think it’s sunk in.”

For days leading up to the storm, Peters and his staff moved the beer coolers and liquor bottles.

“It’s coming so damn fast that we didn’t have much time to prepare,” Peters said before the storm.

They moved anything small enough to take with them to higher ground. And Peters checked and rechecked to make sure his insurance policy would cover damage from a said storm.

“We’re taking everything I can lift and move and things I didn’t remove last time that I learned a lesson from,” he said Wednesday. “You take every storm as seriously as you can because this is such a low point. -lying area.”

On Friday, bewildered residents shuffled through the city’s muddy streets, or bounced around on golf carts and pickup trucks, as a Coast Guard helicopter clattered overhead.

The storm surge piled more than a foot-thick mat of seagrass in some low-lying areas, pushed docks and boats over Riverside Drive and left sticky mud in other areas.

“We have someone’s freezer in the yard,” said Pamela Keen, 62, as she stood on her patio looking at scattered packages of shrimp, green peppers, soda cans and a container of shucked oysters nestled among the seagrass that covered their fronts. meters. Farther away, dishes, beer cans and a paring knife lay on the sidewalk.

Keen and her husband, Gary, rode out the storm at a motel a few miles inland and considered themselves lucky to get a room at the last minute. Unfortunately, she said, it was also infested with cockroaches.

“I’m thankful we had a room even though we had a lot of company,” Keen laughed, before kissing her husband and admonishing their grandchildren to watch out for snakes.

While riding around town in a golf cart with his wife, retiree John Kujawski pointed out the damage still lingering from previous storms, including last summer’s Hurricane Idalia, which also hit Steinhatchee.

Kujawski, a longtime resident of the Naples area, had been visiting Steinhatchee for nearly two decades when they decided to move here permanently, drawn by the community and small-town feel.

As they navigated their bumpy road along muddy Riverside Drive, the couple pointed out boarding houses that had been razed, docks thrown ashore and boats overturned and lodged in pilings near the Sea Hag Marina.

They noted the new roofs being destroyed again and mourned the damage to the newly opened Vargo’s Buffalo Style Pizza restaurant.

“They probably only sold $200 worth of pizza,” Kujawski said. “This is terrible.”

From Gainesville, Peters was still struggling with the loss of his café, and possibly his home. He fishes for scallops and hoped that would be enough to keep him tied up while waiting for insurance and possible government assistance.

He said he has turned down offers of government assistance before, but this time he is willing to accept whatever help he can get.

He plans to start eliminating water and energy bills as soon as possible to stem any further costs while he thinks about the future.

“I’m going to jump through all the hoops,” he said. ‘I have to. I don’t want to just take a huge loss and sell an empty piece of real estate. I’m not someone who gives up so easily. But it all depends on the insurance.”

And he said if it takes him years to rebuild it and replenish it piece by piece when he gets the money, he will do it.

“Over the years I will continue to build if I can afford it,” he said. “At least I saved the booze. But now I have nowhere to put it.”