Andrew Swan didn’t think things would be this bad.
The St. Petersburg resident was watching a friend’s house in Madeira Beach and chose not to evacuate for Hurricane Helene. Forecasters warned the area could get up to eight feet of storm surge. But Swan thought the house might only get a few inches.
Then the water started pouring in.
"It started getting higher and higher, and I started taking all this important paperwork and tried to get it as high as I could, and eventually [the water] got chest-deep," he said.
It's going to be a long road to recovery for Pinellas County's barrier islands after storm surge from Hurricane Helene devastated coastal communities.
Live Blog: Hurricane Helene Updates
Once the storm hit late Thursday, Swan, 31, spent the night alone with his thoughts as he waded through water trying to protect what items in the home he could as Helene raged outside.
"I was thinking about a girl, I was thinking about my parents, I was thinking about life and just what priorities are," he said.
Swan eventually fell asleep on a kitchen counter with his legs draped over the stove, wrapped in whatever towels he hadn’t used to sop up water. When he woke up, he called the woman he’d thought about all night to tell her he was okay, and how much he cared.
Then Swan walked outside to look at the damage.
"I mean everybody is just kind of in shock and just trying to pick up the pieces," he told WUSF the morning after the storm. "I mean nobody really expected it like this."
Photos show the devastation from Hurricane Helene across Tampa Bay
Storm surge turned the beaches into "a war zone"
The Tampa Bay region often gets spared from the worst types of hurricane devastation. That made it challenging for emergency officials to convince some folks who felt they'd done okay in previous storms that this time could be different.
And it was.
"I can’t think of a time ever that Pinellas County has experienced the surge that we experienced," said Sheriff Bob Gualtieri during a press conference on Friday, before describing the aftermath along the beaches like a "war zone."
"Astronomical" amounts of sand lined roadways, making some impassable, said Gualtieri.
Debris of all sorts — trees, hotel furniture, boats and electrical equipment — posed hazards everywhere.
As of Friday evening, access to the islands was still off-limits and some beach communities lost access to drinking water because the systems required emergency repairs.
Flood and wind damage was evident throughout the areas surrounding the barrier islands and other flood-prone locations.
A community banding together
That damage made it harder for Jon Yousef and his girlfriend Ann-Louise Abbott to find a ride off St. Pete Beach on Friday after they rode out Helene there in Yousef's second-floor apartment. They were trying to go to a hotel for the night until it was safe to return.
"My car is filled with water, my car is totaled," said Yousef, who had left the vehicle outside the apartment building during the storm. "My whole parking lot, everyone’s car, [water] was up to the hood, up to the windshield."
Yousef has lived in St. Pete Beach for more than seven years, and said he'd always managed to handle previous storms. So he thought they would be okay hunkering down this time.
But the speed at which the water rose unnerved them, and when the winds picked up, the couple started getting scared. By that point, it was too dangerous for them to leave.
Since they were on the second floor, the storm surge didn't reach their apartment, so they helped others fleeing for safety.
"There were people walking in the middle of the night at its worst," Yousef said. He recalled one man who carried a woman and kept falling into the water.
Another couple came from a nearby neighborhood looking desperate, according to Abbott.
"The lady’s head only stood out of the water and she had her cat on top of her head and I guess her husband was carrying all their stuff," she said.
Yousef, Abbott and their neighbors offered people towels, water, chairs and company during the harrowing event. They spent the night watching the storm submerge cars, blow out power sources and sweep away objects on their street, like the dumpster outside the apartment.
Nobody felt like strangers, they said, just a community helping each other survive.
Helene's deadly toll
Tragically, not everyone made it out alive after Helene.
The storm has killed more than 50 people in the Southeast as of Saturday afternoon. Nine of those deaths occurred in Pinellas County, all in mandatory evacuation Zone A. The sheriff’s office is still investigating but so far, most victims appear to have drowned.
As she announced the initial wave of confirmed deaths at a Friday press conference, Pinellas County Emergency Management Director Cathie Perkins choked up with tears.
"It’s hard," she said. "But we will continue to recover as a community, and we will do everything in our power to continue restoration efforts for our residents."
It's going to take a long time for the area to heal, Perkins said.
"But we're going to do everything to help with that."
