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The death toll from Hurricane Helene continues to rise as the storm moves north and west, bringing heavy rains. The storm has killed dozens of people across four states and millions are without power. In part of Florida's Gulf Coast, where Helene made landfall Thursday night, it was the third hit in a little over a year. NPR's Debbie Elliott has more.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: Aaron Portwood and his wife, Amy Cope, evacuated from their coastal home in Florida's Big Bend ahead of the storm. Friday, they returned to see what Helene's eyewall had left behind.
AARON PORTWOOD: We're at beautiful Dekle Beach, Fla., along the Taylor County coastline. It's a very quaint, quiet, beautiful community. And we are down here coming to terms with the fact that our home is destroyed.
ELLIOTT: More than half of the homes here are just leveled after Helene's more than 15-foot storm surge crashed through the community.
AMY COPE: I think we counted maybe 16 or 17 homes still standing. Now, whether or not they're all safe to be in, I'm not sure.
ELLIOTT: Water still covers parts of the one road into Dekle Beach. Where it's receded, there's a stinky, brown muck in between piles of what's left of homes - the twisted remains of metal roofs, stairs ripped from their structures, fencing hanging in tree limbs. Portwood says he had to walk atop his neighbor's roof, which was on the ground, to get to his property. As they survey the surreal scene, they can't help but to think back to two other hurricanes that followed the same path as Helene - Hurricane Debby early last month and then in August of last year, Idalia, another Category 4 hurricane packing 140-mile-an-hour winds.
PORTWOOD: I can't fathom any one place ever being hit three times in history, much less in a year. So it's truly unreal. I just can't wrap my mind around it. But this one wiped us out. The other two we survived.
ELLIOTT: Portwood is a local newspaper publisher, and Cope has a real estate business. They both grew up in Dekle Beach and are worried about the future. Cope says this disaster comes at a time when the region was already facing economic setbacks.
COPE: Our paper mill has closed. Two of our mills have closed. So, I mean, Taylor County has just been hit back-to-back with devastation. Several of the people that live down here also recently lost their jobs at the mill, and so now they've lost their house too. And we're going to be all right, but we can only be tough so long.
ELLIOTT: Portwood says this is going to put yet another dent in Taylor County's already fragile tax base.
PORTWOOD: We're resilient. There's a lot of resilient, hard, gritty people here in this county, but it's been about five or six straight back-breaking blows in the last year. It's going to be tough.
ELLIOTT: That's something Florida Governor Ron DeSantis acknowledges. He says damage from this storm is worse than Idalia and Debby combined, a harsh reality to contemplate.
RON DESANTIS: It is a sense of trauma for the community. I think it's a sense - I think there's a demoralization because it's like, OK, we worked all this, and then, now, we could potentially be worse off than we were even before Idalia. So we're mindful of that. And as I say, we're going to have support there. It's not going to be easy. But we'll get through it.
CHARLES CARLTON: Are you all right?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yes, sir. Are you all right?
CARLTON: Oh, yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Good. Is Dekle all right?
ELLIOTT: A neighbor greets Charles Carleton as he navigates through the muck and debris to get a glimpse of his house across the marsh, chainsaws buzzing in the distance.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHAINSAWS RUNNING)
CARLTON: Watch for nails here now.
ELLIOTT: He spots it.
CARLTON: It's still standing, but there ain't going to be no getting upstairs.
ELLIOTT: The house is high on pilings, but the steps are washed out, and a metal awning has ripped away from the front porch. He tells his neighbor there's some long, hot work ahead.
CARLTON: It is what it is.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yeah, it is. What can you do?
ELLIOTT: His answer - rebuild. We've done it before, and we can do it again.
Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Dekle Beach, Fla.
(SOUNDBITE OF HERMANOS GUTIERREZ'S "SONIDO COSMICO") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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