BRADENTON BEACH, Fla. — The Cortez Bridge opened to residents and property or business owners on Monday morning – but to foot traffic only.
Across that bridge, roads in the city of Bradenton Beach on the southern end of Anna Maria Island remain closed to traffic. Some roads remain covered in sand. Others washed away or buckled in Hurricane Helene’s storm surge.
Matt Suddock and his family live in Tampa but have a second home in Bradenton Beach. H was among those who made the long walk across the bridge.
“We’ll rebuild. I just feel bad for everybody else who actually lives here,” Suddock said. “It’s our second house that’s different.”
His neighbor Jim LaPoint does live fulltime in Bradenton Beach but evacuated.
“It’s our home. We’ve had five great years here. Maybe get through this and we’ll have another five. I don’t know,” LaPoint said.
LaPoint first made the trip back home to see what remained of his home over the weekend thanks to a boat ride across from a local. Over the weekend, many locals including charter fishermen were shuttling people back and forth to the island.
“They will bring residents over here, no charge. They just want to do a service, and I can’t give them enough credit,” LaPoint said, having again caught a boat ride back on Monday.
Sudduck and LaPoint boh consider themselves lucky.
“It’s what it is. The price of living in paradise,” LaPoint added.
But even though neither have living space on the ground level of their homes, LaPoint had been remodeling and had stored all his furniture downstairs. That furniture not destroyed.
“I can’t even get in there, everything’s a mess. Everything is turned over,” he said.
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Barbara Wilson, a Bradenton Beach resident, is among those who chose not to evacuate. She recounted the moments when she struggled to get out of her home and waded in three feet of water to get to safety.
“It started to fill with water and I live alone and I am eighty-three years old and I said, ‘Dear God, let me open this door, but I couldn’t push it. It wouldn’t push, the water outside.”
Her cellphone was swept away, leaving her no way to get ahold of any of her children, all of which live out of state.
“Now I just walk the streets to get a sandwich or water or whatever cause I have no phone, I have no one. I just walk.”
Wilson walked from her home down to Bridge Street to get free lunch and cleaning supplies being handed out. ABC Action News found Wilson struggling to get back home and took her to the Bradenton Beach Police Department, to get her the help she needs.
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.
