Sue Colson is tired. Their city, Cedar Key, in northwest Florida, just suffered a third hurricane in just over a year with Helene’s arrival. Sitting in a golf cart, she looks at the houses destroyed by the storm and assures that something must change.
“We had a big storm in the 19th century and it was a reset. And now we may have to restart this city again,” says Colson, the town’s mayor. “We must think about restructuring it, it may be different from how it was, but we cannot continue repairing this.”
Cedar Key is an islet in the Gulf of Mexico, joined to the Florida peninsula by a single bridge. Its pastel-colored wooden houses must have once given it the appearance of a postcard city. But hours after the passage of Helene, category 4 out of 5, it is difficult to imagine the place it was before.
On the street closest to the fishing port, the storm surge and winds from the hurricane destroyed numerous homes.
Here and there you see dilapidated houses, with the roof torn off and the walls open. Next to them, the most modern homes, built on stilts, remain intact.
“It breaks my heart”
In August 2023, Category 3 Hurricane Idalia already caused extensive damage in Cedar Key and the rest of the so-called Big Bend, a sparsely populated region of marshes and forests.
A year later, Category 1 Hurricane Debby hit the same area. And now it was Helene.
Gabe Doty, a municipal employee from Cedar Key, laments the bad luck that is affecting the island where he grew up.
“It breaks my heart to see this like this. We haven’t been lucky,” he says. “Our future is very gray. We have lost many businesses. Many houses have disappeared, the market has disappeared. The post office has disappeared. It is a real tragedy, and it is going to be difficult to rebuild,” he says.
A new normal?
About 110 km to the north, the coastal town of Steinhatchee also just suffered the brunt of Helene while still recovering from hurricanes Idalia and Debby.
Here the wind knocked down trees, electrical poles and damaged houses, but the worst was the storm surge, which reached a height of 2.7 meters in some areas.
The push of the water was so strong that it uprooted dozens of slips on the Steinhatchee River and dragged them dozens of meters inland.
In a bar near the river, Jessie Sellers watches, distraught, the consequences of Helene’s passage. His house was barely damaged, but this business, where he works, is full of mud.
“It’s devastating,” says the 39-year-old. “I’m very afraid that this (recurrence of hurricanes) is the new normal. It’s like we are being tested, but we will survive.”
In Cedar Key, Sue Colson is convinced that localities in the area must learn to coexist with nature and adapt to the risk of hurricanes.
“We have to invest money in things that can at least withstand water. Maybe it’s not a fancy house, maybe it’s something that can be dragged off the island during a storm,” he reflects. “But we can’t fight this. It’s very sad, but it doesn’t have to be this way. It can be a rebirth.”
