Cedar Key, a small community on a collection of tiny islands jutting into the Gulf of Mexico, is emerging as one of the areas most devastated when Helene struck Florida’s Big Bend region on Thursday night.
“Cedar Key as we know it is completely gone,” said Michael Bobbitt, a novelist and playwright who lives in the heart of the community and who stayed behind to help whoever he could. An estimated 75 residents chose not to leave, officials said. “Entire houses have been picked up and moved away,” Mr. Bobbitt said.
On Thursday night, as the storm was hitting, Mr. Bobbitt, who has military and first aid training, said he was able to get two older people out of their house and take them to his own, which sits on a partly elevated portion of his island. “We had to go through four feet of water to get to them,” he said.
Around 7 a.m. on Friday, he was on his way out to see how he might help again, and fearful of what he would find.
But so far, officials with Levy County, which contains Cedar Key, said there were no reports of deaths or injury in Cedar Key or other coastal areas of the county. “That’s just a true blessing,” said Lt. Scott Tummond, a public information officer with the Levy County Sheriff’s Office.
A large number of emergency service crews from across the state continue to work in those areas, he said. “We’re still in rescue mode,” Lieutenant Tummond said. Recovery mode, he said, would start “once we ensure the safety of those that we can identify who need assistance.”
Mr. Bobbitt had made a rough, painful inventory of the damage. “The post office is destroyed,” he said. “Several restaurants are destroyed. The Jiffy Food Store is destroyed. Vehicles are smashed in and turned upside down. Everything is impassable. It looks like a nuclear bomb went off.”
Helene is the third hurricane to hit Florida’s Big Bend in 13 months — after Idalia in August of last year came Debby last month.
But Mr. Bobbitt described Helene as the most violent force he had ever experienced. “I didn’t even know how to conceive of something so powerful,” he said, adding that he thought recovery would take years.
“I expect there to be a mass exodus,” he said. “There will be no services here for months. There’s no stores. No restaurants. It’s over.”
The post ‘Completely Gone’: In Florida, Cedar Key Assesses Helene’s Devastation appeared first on New York Times.
