INDIAN ROCKS BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Aiden Bowles was stubborn, so even as Florida officials told residents of the barrier island north of St. Petersburg that Hurricane Helene’s storm surge could be deadly, the retired restaurant owner stayed put.
Caregiver Amanda Normand begged the 71-year-old widower to stay with her inland, but there had been as hurricanes neared his Indian Rocks Beach home — the storm surge never got more than knee-high. As Helene and its strong winds pushed north in the Gulf of Mexico, he wasn’t worried — its eye was 100 miles (160 kilometers) offshore. “He said, ‘It’s going to be fine.
I’m going to go to bed,’” Normand said of their final phone call on the night of Sept. 26. But it wasn’t fine.
In that night’s darkness, a wall of water up to 8-feet high (2.4 meters) . It swept into homes, forcing some who had ignored the evacuation orders to climb into upper floors, attics or onto their roofs to survive.
Boats got dumped in streets, and cars dumped into the water. Bowles and 11 others perished as harder than any hurricane in 103 years. By far the worst damage in the area happened in Pinellas County on the narrow, 20-mile (32-kilometer) string of barrier islands that stretch from St.
Petersburg to Clearwater. Mansions, brightly colored single-family homes, apartments, mobile homes, restaurants, bars and shops were destroyed or heavily damaged in minutes. “The water, it just came so fast,” said Dave Behringer, who rode out the sto.
