AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Across the southeastern U.S., what's left of Hurricane Helene is cutting a deadly and destructive path after making landfall in Florida last night. At least 30 deaths are blamed on the storm, and millions are without power across the region. In Florida, recovery operations are now underway, and to get a sense of what that looks like, we turn now to NPR's Debbie Elliott, who is in Perry, Fla. Hi Debbie.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: Hi there, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK. You're in what's called the Big Bend region, right? How do things look there?
ELLIOTT: Pretty bad. You know, the damage is widespread and devastating. You know, I'm in the city of Perry, which has seen a lot of tree damage here, power lines down, that sort of thing. But earlier, I got down to Dekle Beach and Keaton Beach. Now, this is right where Helene's eyewall came ashore a little after 11 o'clock last night with those 140-mile-an-hour winds, and those communities are just obliterated. The winds have snapped giant trees right at their base, a lot of over power lines on top of homes in some of the rural parts of those communities. And then right along the coast, the water damage is just horrible. The National Hurricane Center says there was a storm surge in this region of about 15 feet.
CHANG: Wow.
ELLIOTT: Yeah. So in Keaton Beach, the search-and-rescue operations were still underway. Teams were going door to door in the community. There was a rescue helicopter circling overhead. Boats had been lifted out of marinas and were perched on the roadway. I'm talking like a big shrimping vessel, not some little skiff or something. Houses were ripped off their foundations, moved yards away. I wasn't even able to stay there very long because the smell of gas was so intense. This town's little corner gas station was leveled, and the storm surge had pushed a giant gas tank across the street. Some areas down there still have water covering their roads.
CHANG: God. All of this sounds so awful. How are people coping with all of this damage?
ELLIOTT: You know, I felt like many of the folks that I met today were really just sort of still in shock, taking stock as they looked out over their flattened communities. In tiny Dekle Beach, neighbors were consoling one another, trying to salvage what they could from the few properties they could access. I talked with Aaron Portwood and his wife, Amy Cope. They grew up in this close-knit community. You could tell it was a very special place to them, and they fear they've lost their home.
AARON PORTWOOD: Our home is one of the very few that are still partially standing. The majority of our neighbors on our road and our canal - the homes are gone. There's concrete slabs and stilts. Ours is still standing, but it's gutted. It's...
AMY COPE: Standing on two legs.
PORTWOOD: It's leaning. It's - there's no way to get up to it. The steps are gone. It's destroyed.
ELLIOTT: Looking out over the one road into Dekle, you can just see the remains of people's homes strewn about in the marsh and in the trees. What looked like maybe a set of stairs was actually dangling up high from a branch. It was...
CHANG: Wow.
ELLIOTT: ...Surreal.
CHANG: Heartbreaking. Well, you know, Debbie, even though people in Florida - they're used to hurricanes, how does Helene compare to previous storms?
ELLIOTT: Well, this is just such a severe blow, I would say. You know, Helene came on a track that was eerily similar to Hurricane Idalia last August and then Debbie this year last month, slamming into these same mostly rural communities in the Big Bend. So this is yet, you know, hard for them to deal with, something that Governor Ron DeSantis acknowledged today.
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RON DESANTIS: This is some serious damage there. And it's one thing to have to deal with really major damage, but then when you've already been rebuilding from one and then this, you know, that takes a toll, I think, emotionally and mentally as well.
ELLIOTT: So it's clear that they are facing a long road to recovery here. In the meantime, resources are being staged. I'm parked in a baptist church parking lot where the local convention is setting up, ready to provide meals to people.
CHANG: That is NPR's Debbie Elliott in Perry, Fla. Thank you so much, Debbie.
ELLIOTT: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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