TREASURE ISLAND, Fla. — The usual scenic drive through Treasure Island is anything but at the moment. Furniture, decorations, clothes, drywall, trash bags, and more line the curbs of every home.
It was one of the last barrier islands in Pinellas County to re-open to residents and contractors. ABC Action News reporter Jada Williams spent some time talking to the people there Monday.
These are their stories.
John Kruszona
"We had books on our first year together, second year together. They're all destroyed," said John Kruszona.
Kruszona wasn't expecting the flooding to hit his waterfront Treasure Island home so hard.
"We had two inches last July in here so we basically cut 5 inches from the baseboard and redid all of that," he said.
He initially planned to wait the storm out.
"I was thinking 'I'll stay. What's a couple of inches? I'll try to do what I can," he said.
He quickly saw that the impacts of this storm could be much different from years past.
"I woke up the next morning and the water was 2 or 3 feet higher than normal so I said this is gonna go down a little bit and it didn't go down with the low tide," he recalled. "I was going to leave around 3 or 4 o' clock and I said '1:30 I'm out of here' because it's already starting to come back up."
Kruszona eventually returned home to a sight he hoped he wouldn't see.
"We didn't lose any clothes last year. No furniture. We lost about 90% of our furniture. Clothes? We'll have to see what we can wash," he said.
He measured 41 inches from the water inside his home; 45 inches from the water line on the outside.
Now he's cut the flooded pieces of drywall out. The majority of his belongings are at the curb.
"It's tough. I was doing good," he said while getting emotional during our talk. "The weatherman Monday or Tuesday said it's gorgeous out here. That's 99.9% of the time here in Florida. This is the other .1%. We're resilient and we'll fix it."
Robert White
Walking through Sunset Beach, Robert White carried a bag of wet clothes and a drill; heading back to his destroyed condo on the water.
"I'm sick to my stomach. But I wasn't here and I survived. I'm alive and my neighbors are alive," he said.
He invited us into his home while on the walk. Before he could open the door, the water line and his attempts at preparation greeted us.
"Obviously this board wasn't high enough. It has been in the past," he said of the piece of wood drilled in front of his door.
"I haven't moved a thing. This is what the apartment looks like. It smells," he said once the door opened.
White says the way his furniture was moved showed the direction the water flowed. Furniture in one room twisted clockwise, while another room was rotated counterclockwise.
"Everything here physically can be replaced but you can't replace a human life. So I'm very grateful that my neighbors are safe," he said.
White calls his neighbors his second family, saying they've always had each other's backs, but especially during the storm.
"I was fortunate enough to listen to Denis Phillips and get out of here on Wednesday night when he predicted the storm. He's been so right on. He's so amazing to me. I watch him exclusively," he said. "I called my neighbors who still had cells working and I said 'How deep was it at 7:00 at low tide?' They said 'We got 24 inches on the building'. When I called Thursday morning, I said how is it and they said total destruction and my heart just sunk."
He says it will take days for him to clean out his apartment. Yet, despite the tough job ahead and the quest to replace virtually all of his belongings, he keeps going back to his faith and his gratitude to be here doing just that.
"It's not my first rodeo so I'm just grateful."
Billy Burke
Billy Burke is White's neighbor. He lives on the second floor of the condo, and that's why he decided to ride the storm out.
I asked him if there was ever a moment he regretted staying.
"When the water got up to about here, chest high," he answered.
He says it made him question the structural integrity of the condo because of the wind and the rush of water.
"It was crazy. I've never seen anything like that, " he said. "It was coming down that street right there like a river."
Burke has lived in the condo for 17 years. He says he's never seen the water get so high and cause so much damage.
He learned just how treacherous the water can be when he had to help a neighbor out.
"A friend of mine tried to get out of his place when it was really high and he was floating away. We had to get a life vest on him because it was moving so fast like a river," he recalled. "They had to take him through the window because the doors were so hard shut, you couldn't open them. You had to use the window."
Another neighbor
As I talked with Burke, another neighbor approached. We didn't catch her name, but we did catch her biggest concern:
"What we really need out here is FEMA here," she said. "I keep seeing 'Call this, do this.' Who has time?"
She also invited us into her home to look at the damage.
"Everything is a total loss. Complete total loss. There's nothing to be saved," she said. "We have sewage everywhere."
She says this is especially tough because she lost her mother in December, and so close to a year since her passing, she's lost so many of the token and keepsakes that reminds her of her mother.
"I't's so hard," she said. "Those are memories you just can't get back, you know?"
She said the storm developed and made landfall all while she on a cruise.
"I asked a neighbor who was house sitting for us how we did and she said it's not good," she recalled.
She finally got back to see for herself Sunday. What she found was a completely flooded home.
"We need somebody here on Sunset Beach, " she said in a plea to get some FEMA assistance. "Anybody on the first floor is suffering right now and we're working in toxic atmosphere."
Stephen Vigiliante
As residents worked to salvage whatever they could, workers moved beside them to clean up the damage.
One sight in particular caught our eye: the sheer number of boats washed not just ashore, but straight into front yards. That's what brought Stephen Vigilante to the island. He's the General Manager of Sea Tow Tampa Bay.
"We have about 31 just on this site. In total we have 150 that need to be picked up still," he explained.
When I talked to him, his team was working on a yard that had 10 boats on it. They had just finished up at the neighbors house, where 11 boats washed up.
"This is probably the most out of one location. I've never counted 11 boats in one yard before but that was a first," he said.
We caught up with him around 11 A.M. He told us the number of boats to move would likely grow throughout the day.
"I'm getting calls everyday. Like I just had one ringing on my watch two seconds ago. They keep coming in and they're not going to stop until they're all cleared out. We could possibly see another 50 today," he added.
His role is important to the neighborhood, especially the people who continue to wait to get inside their doors and assess their damage.
"We got to get through it and get people back into their houses. They can't clean out or do anything until we clean these up."
He said removing the boats take about 10-20 minutes each.
Seeing what Helene did the Tampa Bay will forever stick with him.
"It's kind of upsetting to see how terrifying and just destructive mother nature can be. I've never seen it this bad in Tampa," he said.
A state report says hundreds of frail elderly nursing home residents were stacked side by side, head to toe in a small church with no working air conditioning or refrigerator during Hurricane Helene.
