INDIAN ROCKS BEACH, Fla. — Aiden Bowles was stubborn even when Florida officials told residents of the barrier island north of St. Petersburg Hurricane Helene storm surge could be fatal, the retired restaurant owner stayed put.
Caregiver Amanda Normand begged the 71-year-old widower to stay with her inland, but there was many evacuation warnings over the years When hurricanes approached his home in Indian Rocks Beach, the storm surge never reached more than knee-high. As Helene and his strong winds moved north into the Gulf of Mexico, he wasn’t concerned: the eye was 100 miles offshore.
“He said, ‘It’s going to be OK. I’m going to bed,” Normand said of their last phone call on the night of September 26.
But it wasn’t good. In the darkness of that night, a wall of water grew as high as eight feet landed on the barrier islands. It entered homes and forced some who had ignored evacuation orders to climb to upper floors, attics or onto their roofs to survive. Boats were dumped in the streets and cars dumped in the water.
Bowles and eleven others were killed Helene hit the Tampa Bay area harder than any hurricane in 103 years. By far the greatest damage in the area occurred in Pinellas County, on the narrow, 20-mile (32-kilometer) string of barrier islands stretching from St. Petersburg to Clearwater. Townhouses, brightly colored single-family homes, apartments, mobile homes, restaurants, bars and shops were destroyed or severely damaged within minutes.
“The water came so fast,” said Dave Behringer, who rode out the storm in his home after telling his wife to flee. His neighborhood was hit by about 4 feet of water. “Even if you wanted to leave, there was no way out.”
While the property damage was largely unavoidable, there didn’t have to be any fatalities – the National Hurricane Center published its first storm surge warning two days before Helene arrived, she told barrier island residents to pack up and get out. The relatively shallow waters of Florida’s Gulf Coast make it especially vulnerable to storm surges, and forecasters predicted Helene’s would hit Pinellas County hard.
“We really want people to take the warning seriously because their lives are in serious danger,” said Cody Fritz, leader of the hurricane center’s storm surge team, adding that warnings are never issued lightly.
Pinellas County reiterated the warnings and issued mandatory evacuation orders — but that doesn’t mean police officers are evicting residents. In Florida, mandatory evacuation orders simply mean that anyone left behind is on their own, and first responders do not have to risk their lives to save those left behind.
“We have argued our case. We told people what to do, but they chose something else,” said Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. Still, his deputies tried to rescue the residents, but the wave forced their boats and vehicles to turn back.
The Tampa Bay area has been extremely fortunate over the past century. Since the last major storm hit in 1921, Tampa, St. Petersburg and their surrounding areas have grown from about 300,000 combined residents to more than 3 million today.
Tampa Bay has been in the crosshairs of many storms over the decades, but they always hit the Florida Peninsula south of the area or head north into the Panhandle.
It was never predicted that Helene would reach Tampa; the eye made landfall 180 miles north. But with a width of more than 200 miles and winds of nearly 140 miles per hour near its core, it created waves that hit all the time the Gulf Coast of the Florida Peninsula. Most were not fatal, but on the Pinellas barrier islands the wall of water came from all sides.
“It doesn’t take a storm making landfall directly on top of Tampa Bay or just north of it to cause a lot of flooding problems, especially if you have a big storm like Helene,” said Philip Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University. University.
It will take time so that the islands return to normal. In 90-degree (32.2 degrees Celsius) heat this week, residents piled water-soaked furniture, appliances, cabinets and dry walls outside to haul them away. Bulldozers pushed the sand back onto the beach. Store and restaurant employees tossed what could no longer be saved while owners figured out how and when to reopen. Some might not.
Laura Rushmore, who has owned the Reds on the Boulevard bar for 20 years, may be walking away. She cried as she described the damage. A cooler full of beer had been thrown on its side and the interior of the bar was destroyed. She doesn’t know exactly what the insurance covers.
“It’s too much,” she said.
Then there are the deaths; the people cannot be replaced.
Frank Wright was an outdoorsman perfect for life on Madeira Beach, a small community on a barrier island. But a few years ago, the 71-year-old was diagnosed with a degenerative autoimmune disease.
“He went from being pretty active, outside and everything, to being in a wheelchair,” said his neighbor Mike Visnick.
He thinks Wright probably believed he would be safe, given the earlier warnings that didn’t materialize. But he drowned in the wave.
“I think it’s very sad how he died. He lived a good life. He loved the beach,” Visnick said.
Further north, in the Romantic Mobile Home Park, retired hairdresser Patricia Mikos had never defied fate, said her neighbor Georgia Marcum. The beach community is on land, but that area was also in the predicted path of the wave.
The 80-year-old always fled when hurricanes approached, so when Marcum left the park before the storm to care for her 95-year-old father, she was sure her friend would leave too.
But for some reason she didn’t, and when the water rose, Mikos got into trouble. She called a friend nearby. When he arrived, he told her, ‘Let’s get out of here,'” Marcum said. But when she went back to her house to get something, the water kept trapping her inside.
The friend “couldn’t get back in there. He doesn’t talk to anyone. He doesn’t even talk to us. I’m sure he blames himself,” Marcum said.
About 10 miles south, in Indian Rocks Beach, two of Bowles’ neighbors, Donna Fagersten and Heather Anne Boles, decided to ride Helene out of their homes, as they had done in other storms.
Fagersten, 66, retired four days after 35 years of teaching, most recently second grade. In retirement, she would have time to watch the crime dramas she loved and spend time with her two sons, her friends and her cat.
Boles said WTVT-TV that when the water hit land, she and Fagersten tried to drive away, but could not. They fled into Boles’ mother’s house and rushed to the third floor.
After a while the storm seemed to weaken, so Fagersten decided to go home to check on her cat, but got caught in the water. She couldn’t be saved. Her cat was found safe.
Earlier this week, Normand, 34, was at Bowles’ destroyed home cleaning up the mess Helene had left behind. She had long worked for Bowles and his late wife Sabrina at the Salt Public House. They were loved by their employees, she said.
“He was just very sincere. He was the best person I know on this earth. Just talking about it gives me goosebumps,” she says.
She became Bowles’ caregiver after his wife died two years ago and he retired. She took him to the doctor and bought him groceries. They were each other’s shoulders to cry on.
The morning after the wave, Normand desperately tried to reach Bowles, but the bridge was blocked. She called one of his neighbors, who found his body.
‘Every day I wake up and think, ‘Did he call me? Was he trying to get me or something?” Normand said, her voice breaking at times. “I just hope he’s not in pain.”
Her six-year-old son regarded Bowles as a grandfather and did not understand what was happening.
“He tells me, ‘Mommy, we’re going to get Mr. Bowles, open the doors and get all the water out,’” she said. “It just broke my heart.”
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Spencer reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Associated Press journalists Freida Frisaro and Marta Oliver-Craviotto contributed to this report.