Florida communities hit three times by hurricanes grapple with how and whether to rebuild

HORSESHOE BEACH, Fla. — It was only a month ago that Brooke Hiers left the state-issued emergency trailer where her family had been living ever since Hurricane Idalia struck her Gulf Coast fishing village Horseshoe beach in August 2023.

Hiers and her husband Clint were still finishing electrical work on the house they had painstakingly rebuilt themselves, wiping out Clint’s savings to do so. They’ll never finish that wiring job.

Hurricane Helene blew their newly renovated house off its five-foot stilts, sending it floating into a neighbor’s yard.

“You always think, ‘Oh, this can’t possibly happen again,’” Hiers said. “I don’t know if anyone has ever experienced this in the history of hurricanes.”

For the third time in 13 months, this windy stretch of Florida’s Big Bend took a direct hit from a hurricane, a one-two-three blow to a 50-mile swath of the state’s more than 8,500 miles. kilometers) of coastline, first through Idalia, then Category 1 Hurricane Debby in August 2024 and now Helene.

Hiers, who sits on the Horseshoe Beach City Council, said words like “incredible” are starting to lose their meaning.

‘I tried to use them all. Catastrophic. Devastating. Heartbreaking…none of this explains what happened here,” Hiers said.

The back-to-back hits in Florida’s Big Bend are forcing residents to consider the true cost of living in an area besieged by storms that researchers say are strengthening because climate change.

De Hiers, like many others here, can’t afford it homeowners’ insurance for their flood-prone homes, even if it was available. Residents who have seen their life savings washed away multiple times have little choice: leave the communities where their families have lived for generations, pay tens of thousands of dollars in rebuild their houses on poles as required by building codes, or get into a recreational vehicle that allows them to drive out of the danger zone.

As long as they can afford all that. The storm left many residents staying with family or friends, sleeping in their cars or taking shelter in what was left of their collapsing homes.

Janalea England didn’t wait for outside organizations to get help to her friends and neighbors, turning her commercial seafood market in the river town of Steinhatchee into a pop-up distribution center for donations, just as she did after Hurricane Idalia. A row of folding tables was piled with water, canned food, diapers, soap, clothes and shoes, and a steady stream of residents came and went.

“I have never seen so many people homeless as now. Not in my community,” England said. “They have nowhere to go.”

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 has largely been avoided by the hustle and bustle of condos, golf courses and souvenir shopping centers that fill so much of the Sun State.

This is a place where teachers, factory workers and housekeepers can still afford to live within walking distance of the white sand beaches of the Gulf. Or at least they used to, until a third consecutive hurricane blew their homes apart.

Helene was so destructive that many residents no longer have homes to clean up. They fled the storm with little more than the clothes on their backs, even losing their shoes to the surging tides.

“People didn’t even have Christmas decorations to pick up or a plate from the 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, which has organized its own donation site, has no faith in government agencies and insurance companies.

“FEMA hasn’t done much,” she said. “They lost everything with Idalia and they were told: ‘Here you can get a loan.’ I mean, where does our tax money go?”

The English sister, Lorraine Davis, received a letter in the mail a few days before Helene struck stating that her insurance company had dropped her, with no explanation other than that her house “didn’t meet the conditions.”

Davis lives on a fixed income and has no idea how to repair the long cracks that appeared in the ceiling of her trailer after the last storm.

“We’ll all be on our own,” England said. “We are used to it.”

In the surreal aftermath of this third hurricane, some residents don’t have the strength to clean their homes again, not with other storms still brewing in the Gulf.

As marinas have been washed away, restaurants have collapsed and vacation homes have been swept away, many commercial fishermen, operators and cleaners have lost their homes and their jobs in the same day.

Those who worked at the local sawmill and paper mill, two major employers in the area, were also laid off in the past year. Now a convoy of semi-trucks full of hurricane relief supplies has set up camp at the closed mill in the town of Perry.

Hud Lilliott was a factory worker for 28 years before losing his job and now his canal house in Dekle Beach, just down the street from his childhood home.

Lilliott and his wife Laurie hope to rebuild their home there, but don’t know how to pay for it. And they worry that the Steinhatchee school where Laurie teaches first grade could become another victim of the storm as the county watches its tax base drift away.

“We’ve worked all our 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 becomes dark.”

Dave Beamer rebuilt his home in Steinhatchee after it was “tossed” by Hurricane Idalia, only to see it washed away into the swamp a year later.

“I don’t think I can do that again,” Beamer said. “Everyone is changing their minds about how we’re going to live here.”

A waterlogged clock in a nearby shed marks the moment when time stopped, marking before Helene and after.

Beamer plans to stay in this river town, but is putting his house on wheels: he’s buying a camper and building a pole barn to park it under.

In Horseshoe Beach, Hiers is awaiting the delivery of a makeshift town hall in the coming days, a double-wide trailer where they will offer whatever 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 them. From your city. From your community,” Hiers said. “We just don’t even know how to recover at this point.”

Hiers said she and her husband will likely buy an RV and park it where their house once stood. But they won’t return to Horseshoe Beach permanently until this year’s storms pass. They can’t bear to do this again.

___ Kate Payne is a staff 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.