He’s lived through many storms in his 30 years on Longboat Key, but Bob Parrish said he’s never before seen the level of destruction that Hurricane Helene blew into town a little more than two weeks ago.
The 6-foot wall of seawater that surged in and flooded out dozens of homes and businesses — and destroyed his prized Camaro — left the island of about 7,500 residents along Florida’s Gulf Coast reeling, he said.
And so on Monday, days before Milton — an even bigger storm — was predicted to strike Florida’s west coast, Bob and his wife, Mary, who weathered out Helene at home, decided to flee. After making about 30 phone calls, they finally wound up in a motel room in Lakeland, an inland city more than 80 miles away.
Ever since, the couple has been holed up with their two dogs, not knowing what’s become of their community, one of several barrier islands battered for a second time in as many weeks.
“We’ve not been back or able to figure out yet whether we even have a home to return to,” Parrish told NBC News on Friday.
Florida’s barrier islands — a collection of long, thin sandbars known for their scenic white-sand beaches, brilliant sunsets and tight-knit communities — were the first to suffer Milton’s wrath when it barreled onto Siesta Key west of Sarasota Wednesday night.
The Category 3 hurricane belted the islands with 100-mph wind gusts, pushed in a storm surge up to 6 feet deep, dumped more than a foot and a half of rain in some areas and killed at least 17 people statewide. It also brought a double whammy of destruction from two major hurricanes to a string of islands and their residents who were still rebuilding from Hurricane Ian in 2022.
But even after six major hurricanes have hit Florida’s Gulf Coast in the past seven years, many residents say they can’t imagine leaving.
“There are so many people who love the island,” said Angela Rodocker, a second-generation hotel owner on Anna Maria Island. “It’s their happy place.”
David Farrar, a resident of Island Estates, an offshore neighborhood of Clearwater connected to the city by bridge, called the damage from the storms “heartbreaking.”
“The loss everybody’s had, it looks like a war zone,” added Farrar, president of the neighborhood’s civic association, which represents 2,300 residences and about 4,000 people. “Entire houses are on the street. Honestly, I only cried a little bit after Milton because I cried so much after Helene. I thought it couldn’t get any worse than this after Helene. It got worse in a different way because Milton was wind, versus water. Opposite punches.”
Rodocker said her two properties at Bradenton Beach on Anna Maria Island, known collectively as Silver Resorts, sustained water and silt damage when Helene swept through the Southeast last month and flooded the ground floors.
When Milton barreled through the area this week, the parking lot of one hotel “became a depository for sand” 6 feet deep in some places, she said.
Even before Helene and Milton brought the one-two punch, Rodocker was still reeling from Hurricane Debby’s path of destruction in August.
“It felt like the area itself got a three-way punch,” she said. “It was like a right, a left and an undercut.”
Residents and business owners on Anna Maria Island were just beginning to return to their properties on Friday.
Bradenton Beach Mayor John Chappie had been assessing the damage to his city since Thursday. Much of it was leftover from Helene, he said, which brought up to a 4-foot storm surge.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Chappie said. “It’s my friends, my neighbors — 50 years out here and seeing their homes or livelihoods decimated like this. We’ll build back.”
The Florida Department of Transportation removed more than 40,000 cubic yards of sand from Bradenton Beach after Helene. When Milton arrived, it “swirled around” remaining debris, and knocked over a home near his own, Chappie said.
“I don’t like saying it this way, but we were north of the hurricane, so we were on at least the good side,” he said. “We didn’t have that surge coming back at us.”
Bradenton Beach resident and realtor Mike Norman has seen hurricanes come and go since he first got into the real estate industry in 1978. Like many of his neighbors, Norman downplayed the damage to his own home.
“We only got 8 inches of water in my house,” he said. “Some people got 4 feet, right?”
He doesn’t expect the multitude of hurricanes in recent years to dissuade people from continuing to rent or buy homes on the barrier islands. They are lured by the promise of white sand and turquoise water just steps from their bedroom.
Norman said he anticipates a slowdown in business in coming months as local communities rush to rebuild through the fall and winter. But come next summer, he expects business to boom as usual.
“We have a remarkable ability to forget the bad things in the past,” he said. “People forget about these hurricanes and the damage they’ve done because things get put back together and life goes on again.”
John Lai, president and CEO of the chamber of commerce representing about 500 businesses on Sanibel and Captiva islands, west of Cape Coral, said the latest storms were “more of an emotional gut punch than it is an event that requires a full rebuild.”
Lai said Sanibel and Captiva islands rely on tourism and were having record-breaking success in 2022 before Ian decimated hotels and restaurants.
“When we talk about physical recovery — we can clean them out, we can get them back up, probably a 30-day, 60-day delay, which, in the overall scheme of things, isn’t that big,” he said. “But it is a morale killer.”
The extent of damage varied from island to island.
In Charlotte County, Rod Nibert had been waiting since sunrise Friday morning to return to his home and five rental properties on Manasota Key after evacuating to Orlando earlier in the week. He and a friend had pulled over in a commercial driveway in hopes of getting clearance from police to re-enter the island. Several hours after they arrived, it remained unclear whether they would gain access.
Even before Milton made landfall, all of Nibert’s properties sustained flood damage following Helene’s 4-foot storm surge. On Friday, he worried about the extra destruction inflicted by Milton’s fierce winds.
“This is everything I have in the world,” he said. “So to lose all of that, I lose my retirement, I lose my business, I lose my income, I lose my house.”
With such major storms seemingly becoming more frequent and more severe, many residents of barrier islands still say the risk is worth the reward.
Once power and water is restored to Longboat Key, Parrish — nearly 80 and battling cancer — said he and his wife will return to assess what’s left of their home. If necessary, they’ll be “willing to restart and rebuild,” he said.
Parrish, who has done tax accounting for years for many businesses and residents in town, said his neighbors are friendly, the arts and culture of Sarasota is a short drive away, and the setting is unrivaled.
“Even though the Gulf can get very angry,” he said, “it’s a beautiful place most of the time.”
