Florida communities hit three times by hurricanes are grappling with how and whether to rebuild

HORSESHOE BEACH, Fla. – Just a month ago, Brooke Hiers left the state-issued emergency trailer her family had lived in since Hurricane Idalia struck their Gulf Coast fishing village of Horseshoe Beach in August 2023.

Hiers and her husband Clint were still finishing up the electrical work on the house they had painstakingly rebuilt themselves, wasting Clint's savings. You will never finish this wiring job.

Hurricane Helene blew her newly renovated home off its four-foot-tall piles and sent it flying into the neighbor's yard next door.

“You always think, 'Oh, there's no way this can happen again,'” Hiers said. “I don’t know if anyone has ever experienced this in the history of hurricanes.”

For the third time in 13 months, this windswept stretch of Florida's Big Bend was directly hit by a hurricane – a double whammy on a 50-mile (80-kilometer) stretch of the state's more than 8,400 miles (13,500 kilometers) of coastline, first through Idalia , then by Category 1 Hurricane Debby in August 2024 and now by Helene.

Hiers, who sits on the Horseshoe Beach City Council, said words like “incredible” are starting to lose their meaning.

“I tried to use them all. Catastrophic. Destructive. Heartbreaking … none of this explains what happened here,” Hiers said.

The back-to-back accidents in Florida's Big Bend are forcing residents to reckon with the real cost of living in an area hit by storms that researchers say are becoming more intense due to climate change.

The Hiers, like many others here, cannot afford home insurance for their flood-prone homes, even if it were available. Residents who have seen their savings wasted repeatedly have no choice: leave the communities where their families have lived for generations, pay tens of thousands of dollars to rebuild their homes on stilts as required by building codes, or move into a new home recreational vehicle that they can use to drive out of harm's way.

Assuming they can afford any of these things. The storm caused many residents to stay overnight with family or friends, sleep in their cars or seek shelter in the remains of their collapsing homes.

Not waiting for outside organizations to provide help to her friends and neighbors, Janalea England turned her commercial fish market in the river town of Steinhatchee into a pop-up donation distribution center, just as she did after Hurricane Idalia. A row of folding tables were stacked with water, canned goods, diapers, soap, clothing and shoes, a steady stream of residents coming and going.

“I have never seen so many homeless people as I do now. Not in my community,” England said. “You can’t go anywhere.”

Sparsely populated Big Bend is known for its towering pine forests and pristine salt marshes that disappear over the horizon. It's a remote stretch of largely undeveloped coastline that has largely escaped the crush of condos, golf courses and souvenir shopping malls that have fragmented so much of the Sunshine State.

This is a place where teachers, mill workers and housekeepers can still afford to live within walking distance of the Gulf's white sand beaches. At least that was the case until a third hurricane in a row blew up their homes.

Helene was so destructive that many residents were left with no home to clean up and escaped the storm with little more than the clothes on their backs, even losing their shoes in the flood.

“People didn’t even have a Christmas ornament to take home or a plate from their kitchen,” Hiers said. “It was just gone.”

In a place where people are trying to escape what they see as government interference, England, which has organized its own fundraising page, doesn't rely on government agencies and insurance companies.

“FEMA hasn’t done much,” she said. “They lost everything with Idalia and were told, 'You can get a loan here.' I mean, where does our tax money go?”

England's sister Lorraine Davis received a letter in the mail just days before Helene's arrival explaining that her insurance was dropping her, with no explanation other than that her home “does not meet the terms and conditions of insurance.”

Davis lives on a fixed income and has no idea how to repair the long cracks that appeared in the ceiling of her trailer after the last storm.

“We’ll all be on our own,” England said. “We’re used to it.”

In the surreal aftermath of this third hurricane, some residents don't have the strength to clean up their homes again, not because there are still other storms brewing in the Gulf.

As marinas were washed away, restaurants collapsed and vacation homes blew up, many commercial fishermen, waiters and house cleaners lost their homes and jobs on the same day.

Those who worked at the local sawmill and paper mill, two major employers in the area, were also laid off last year. Now a convoy of tractor-trailers full of hurricane relief supplies has set up camp at the shuttered factory in the town of Perry.

Hud Lilliott was a mill worker for 28 years before losing his job and now his canal house in Dekle Beach, just down the street from the house where he grew up.

Lilliott and his wife Laurie want to rebuild their house there, but don't know how they'll pay for it. And they fear the school in Steinhatchee, where Laurie teaches first grade, could become another victim of the storm as the county watches its tax base disappear.

“We've worked all our lives and are so close to what we call the 'golden years,'” Laurie said. “It’s like you see the light and everything goes dark.”

Dave Beamer rebuilt his Steinhatchee home after it was “totalized” by Hurricane Idalia, only to see it washed into the swamp a year later.

“I don’t think I can do this again,” Beamer said. “Everyone changes their mind about how we’re going to live here.”

A soaked clock in a nearby shed marks the moment time stopped, marking before and after Helene.

Beamer plans to stay in this river town but put his home on wheels – he's buying an RV and building a pole barn to park it underneath.

In Horseshoe Beach, Hiers is waiting for a makeshift town hall to be delivered in the coming days, a double-wide trailer in which they will provide whatever services they can for as long as possible. She and her husband live with their daughter, a 45-minute drive away.

“You feel like this could be the end of things as you knew them. From your city. From your community,” Hiers said. “We just don’t even know how to recover at this point.”

Hiers said she and her husband would likely buy a mobile home and park it where their home once stood. But they won't return to Horseshoe Beach for good until this year's storms pass. They can't bear to do this again.

___ Kate Payne is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.