HORSESHOE BEACH, Fla. (AP) â It was just a month ago that Brooke Hiers left the state-issued emergency trailer where her family had lived since slammed into her Gulf Coast fishing village of in August 2023.
Hiers and her husband Clint were still finishing the electrical work in the home they painstakingly rebuilt themselves, wiping out Clintâs savings to do so. They never will finish that wiring job.
blew their newly renovated home off its four foot-high pilings, sending it floating into the neighborâs yard next door.
âYou always think, âOh, thereâs no way it can happen againâ,â Hiers said. âI donât know if anybodyâs ever experienced this in the history of hurricanes.â
For the third time in 13 months, this windswept stretch of Floridaâs Big Bend took a direct hit from a hurricane â a one-two-three punch to a 50-mile (80-kilometer) sliver of the stateâs more than 8,400 miles (13,500 kilometers) of coastline, first by Idalia, then Category 1 Hurricane Debby in August 2024 and now Helene.
Hiers, who sits on Horseshoe Beachâs town council, said words like âunbelievableâ are beginning to lose their meaning.
âIâve tried to use them all. Catastrophic. Devastating. Heartbreaking ⊠none of that explains what happened here,â Hiers said.
The back-to-back hits to Floridaâs Big Bend are forcing residents to reckon with the true costs of living in an area under siege by storms that researchers say are becoming stronger because of .
The Hiers, like many others here, homeownerâs insurance on their flood-prone houses, even if it was . Residents who have watched their life savings get washed away multiple times are left with few choices â leave the communities where their families have lived for generations, pay tens of thousands of dollars to on stilts as building codes require, or move into a recreational vehicle they can drive out of harmâs way.
Thatâs if they can afford any of those things. The storm left many residents bunking with family or friends, sleeping in their cars, or sheltering in whatâs left of their collapsing homes.
Janalea England wasn't waiting for outside organizations to get aid to her friends and neighbors, turning her commercial fish market in the river town of Steinhatchee into a pop-up donation distribution center, just like she did after Hurricane Idalia. A row of folding tables was stacked with water, canned food, diapers, soap, clothes and shoes, a steady stream of residents coming and going.
âIâve never seen so many people homeless as what I have right now. Not in my community,â England said. âThey have nowhere to go.â
âItâs just gone'
The sparsely populated Big Bend is known for its towering pine forests and pristine salt marshes that disappear into the horizon, a remote stretch of largely undeveloped coastline thatâs mostly dodged the crush of condos, golf courses and souvenir strip malls that has carved up so much of the Sunshine State.
This is a place where teachers, mill workers and housekeepers could still afford to live within walking distance of the Gulfâs white sand beaches. Or at least they used to, until a third successive hurricane blew their homes apart.
Helene was so destructive, many residents donât have a home left to clean up, escaping the storm with little more than the clothes on their backs, even losing their shoes to the surging tides.
âPeople didnât even have a Christmas ornament to pick up or a plate from their kitchen,â Hiers said. âIt was just gone.â
In a place where people are trying to get away from what they see as government interference, England, who organized her own donation site, isnât putting her faith in government agencies and insurance companies.
âFEMA didnât do much,â she said. âThey lost everything with Idalia and they were told, âhere, you can have a loan.â I mean, whereâs our tax money going then?â
Englandâs sister, Lorraine Davis, got a letter in the mail just days before Helene hit declaring that her insurance company was dropping her, with no explanation other than her home âfails to meet underwritingâ.
Living on a fixed income, Davis has no idea how sheâll repair the long cracks that opened up in the ceiling of her trailer after the last storm.
âWe'll all be on our own,â England said. âWe're used to it.â
âThis could be the end of your town'
In the surreal aftermath of this third hurricane, some residents donât have the strength to clean up their homes again, not with other storms still brewing in the Gulf.
With marinas washed away, restaurants collapsed and vacation homes blown apart, many commercial fishermen, servers and housecleaners lost their homes and their jobs on the same day.
Those who worked at the local sawmill and paper mill, two bedrock employers in the area, were laid off in the past year too. Now a convoy of semi-trucks full of hurricane relief supplies have set up camp at the shuttered mill in the city of Perry.
Hud Lilliott was a mill worker for 28 years, before losing his job and now his canal-front home in Dekle Beach, just down the street from the house where he grew up.
Lilliott and his wife Laurie hope to rebuild their house there, but they donât know how theyâll pay for it. And theyâre worried the school in Steinhatchee where Laurie teaches first grade could become another casualty of the storm, as the county watches its tax base float away.
âWe've worked our whole lives and we're so close to where they say the âgolden yearsâ," Laurie said. "It's like you can see the light and it all goes dark.â
Dave Beamer rebuilt his home in Steinhatchee after it was âtotaledâ by Hurricane Idalia, only to see it washed into the marsh a year later.
âI donât think I can do that again,â Beamer said. âEverybodyâs changing their mind about how weâre going to live here.â
A waterlogged clock in a shed nearby shows the moment when time stopped, marking before Helene and after.
Beamer plans to stay in this river town, but put his home on wheels â buying a camper and building a pole barn to park it under.
In Horseshoe Beach, Hiers is waiting for a makeshift town hall to be delivered in the coming days, a double-wide trailer where theyâll offer what services they can for as long as they can. She and her husband are staying with their daughter, a 45-minute drive away.
âYou feel like this could be the end of things as you knew it. Of your town. Of your community,â Hiers said. âWe just don't even know how to recover at this point.â
Hiers said she and her husband will probably buy an RV and park it where their home once stood. But they won't be moving back to Horseshoe Beach for good until this year's storms are done.
They can't bear to do this again.
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Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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Kate Payne And David R. Martin, The Associated Press
