Many storm veterans left Florida’s Big Bend ahead of Hurricane Helene
PANACEA, Fla. – In his 58 years, John Posey, a lifelong resident of the Forgotten Coast of Florida on the remote eastern edge of the Panhandle, had never evacuated for a hurricane – neither for Dennis in 2005, nor for Michael in 2018.
But on Wednesday, as he stood outside his namesake seafood restaurant in Panacea, Florida, a community of about 800 near the marshy shores of Ochlockonee Bay, Posey admitted that this hurricane felt different. Helene was closing in and, for the first time, he wasn’t sure he could stay.
Across Florida’s Big Bend region, which has endured two other hurricanes in 13 months, many more people appeared to be heeding evacuation orders this time, leaving the small towns that dot the coast eerily empty Thursday.
That was especially true in three rural counties that had taken the rare step of ordering mandatory countywide evacuations. Homes and businesses in Wakulla County, where Panacea is, were boarded up. In Crawfordville, even the local Waffle House was covered with plywood.
The streets of Carrabelle, a waterfront city with a population of about 2,600 in neighboring Franklin County, appeared mostly deserted. In Taylor County, the sheriff’s office asked residents staying home to email local officials so that they could track who might need rescuing after the storm.
The Florida National Guard arrived Thursday morning in Cedar Key, a tiny city that sits on a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico, to alert the remaining residents about the approaching danger.
“In the last storm here, people would walk by us with beer and we’d say, ‘There’s a hurricane here,’ ” Capt. John Meacham said. “They’d say, ‘We’ll stick it out.’ ”
He noticed fewer such people Thursday.
John MacDonald, the director of emergency management for Levy County, which includes Cedar Key, said he had hoped to see more residents in emergency shelters. “But I know some people seek shelter with family or somewhere else,” he added.
Capt. Jeff Yarbrough, a spokesperson for the Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office, said deputies had been thorough in going door to door beginning Wednesday to urge people to get out, especially if they live south of U.S. 98, which runs parallel to the Gulf Coast.
“The conditions for our county are pretty severe, more so than we’ve had in recent memory,” he said. Perhaps 200 people whom deputies had contacted in the county of about 35,000 said they planned to stay, he estimated Thursday afternoon.
To the southeast in Steinhatchee, a fishing town of a few hundred people, Tyler Rayborn, 31, bluntly summarized the feel of the place as he worked with a friend to anchor down the sign for his family’s hardware store: “It’s dead. Town’s dead.”
Not everyone was planning to leave, Rayborn said, including himself. He said he would stay at his home, a short drive inland, before heading back to reopen as soon as possible so people could get supplies.
Many who own homes in the small community are relatively new to the state, he said, and spooked by the threat of the storm.
“Us, born and raised, we just stay here,” said Rayborn, who had a University of Florida alligator tattoo and an elaborate artistic sketch of the state visible on his left arm. “There’s nowhere for us to go.”
A little bit farther north, near Keaton Beach, Donna and Greg Staab sat on their porch on Thursday morning enjoying a cool breeze. They planned to head for a neighbor’s homemade bunker in the afternoon.
“We’re just hoping for the best, that’s all you can do at this point,” Donna Staab said. “Just stay and pray.”
Farther south, near Tampa Bay, which is far from Hurricane Helene’s winds but was experiencing storm surge Thursday, some residents accustomed to street flooding said they would stay.
Joe and Steph Powless rode bicycles to the beach in Gulfport, west of St. Petersburg, to check on conditions.
“It’s just so common,” Joe Powless said as waters inundated the streets. The couple lives in a low-lying area under a mandatory evacuation order but were staying put, they said, along with most of their neighbors.
In asking people to evacuate, emergency managers repeatedly reminded residents that they did not need to go too far from home – likely just a few miles inland, away from the deadly storm surge, which is expected to reach up to 20 feet high in parts of northern Florida.
Cole Hall, a 25-year-old oyster farmer from Oyster Bay, decided to stay with family about 10 miles north of Panacea.
“We got oysters. We got beer. We got generators. We got pretty much everything we need,” he said. “We got gator on the grill right now.”
On Thursday, he was busy sinking the cages that house his growing oyster crop to the bottom of the bay in an effort to protect the seeds from possible storm surge.
His biggest fear is losing his farm, he said. “My next year’s product could potentially be lost, and I wouldn’t have anything for next year to sell.”
In Panacea, Posey, the restaurant owner, was assessing his situation as he looked out over the miserable, steady rain that fell most of the day.
“I’d be crabbing in this,” said Posey, who is also a commercial fisherman. He remembered past storms: “During Dennis, I was rescuing people with an aluminum boat.”
But he worried that strong winds could rip off roofs. And he’s older now, he said – a grandfather looking to stay safe.
Posey said he would wait for the water to get to the door of his restaurant.
Then, he might go.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.