CLEARWATER BEACH, Fla. — Close your eyes and imagine Clearwater Beach. Now open them. The sight in front of us is anything but what we know and love, all due to the destruction Hurricane Helene left behind.
"Everything is lost," Alex Greco, the General Manager of Kings Pizza and Grill, said.
His business and every single other business on the island are gutted. Pictures, tables, chairs, equipment, even the walls line the street, ready for trash pick up.
"We got wings, everything, like we're talking about $20,000," he said, speaking of all of the food he had to throw away. "I just got the truck in before the day of the storm."
Greco told me one of the nearby businesses told him they don't plan to return; their lease was coming up, and the amount of damage left to deal with just wasn't worth it.
But rebuilding is worth it to many others, just like Greco. He said that even now, as they work to clean out their gutted building, they're committed to helping the other workers on the island as best they can.
"We have to open for all these guys to come here. We take care of all the workers with the cheapest on the beach," he said, reminiscing of what the business was able to do before the storm. "These people are waiting for us and reopen. They come and say please. So I give them a free drink right now."
It's a similar situation at Frenchy's Rockaway Grill. Their team spent Tuesday cleaning up as best they could, too.
"It's not good, but all things considered, not as bad as we thought when we started seeing video and photos of the beach, so it's still standing. We didn't have any glass broken. We only got a little bit of water inside, which was a miracle," said Frenchy's General Manager Chris Tiemeier.
They shared a video from their cameras at the beachfront restaurant of the water rushing throughout the patio. The building was secured with hurricane shutters, and it was also emptier than normal on the inside.
"At this location, we were in the middle of renovations, so we already had a lot of the equipment out of the building. We had a lot of furniture out of the building. We hadn't started putting pouring the bar tops yet. We hadn't done the floors yet. So for us personally, at this location, it's basically just removing, you know, any damage from the storm, and then continuing with the renovation," Tiemeier said.
Other locations were also damaged in the storm. In fact, the ice cream just beside Frenchy's Rockaway is owned by the restaurant as well. What it looks like in there is still to be seen.
"It's a tiny little thing. It's still standing, but we haven't really even opened the doors yet. We didn't have any product in the building here, so we didn't have to empty coolers full of rotten food. But the ice cream shop is going to, it's going to be a process over there. But luckily, it's small, so I think we just throw it out, pull the you know, what's not good. Yeah, we're not thinking about that right now. So it's gonna be one stinky can of worms open," he added.
The damage isn't just to the buildings. The parking lot is either taken up by mountains or sand, or ripped into chunks of asphalt thrown around. Next door at Palm Pavilion, the devastation is similar. But that's the case just about anywhere you look.
The big question now is when we will be able to enjoy the restaurants again. The answers may vary by owner, but for most, it is not soon.
"We weren't real sure when we were going to be open before the storm happened. So I'm not even going to guess. Just as soon as we can get everything cleaned up and safe. You know, we also had a lot of employees that live on the beach that are, you know, throwing all their possessions out and cleaning their furniture out of their houses. So we're certainly not gonna, you know, ask anybody to come help that's dealing with that on the personal level. So it's, you know, we'll get it done when we get it done," Tiemeier responded.
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