They say they are unhappy with the insurance company, the slow permitting process and the lack of elected officials.
Look | Keaton Beach residents look back on their lives since Hurricane Helen
Keaton Beach resident and owner of Trading Post, Stephanie Weldon shares what it was like in the aftermath of Hurricane Helen and how the day felt.
DECURBEACH, Fla. – Sheila Blue sits at a picnic table under a 24-foot stilt home.
She turns to her left and sees the marsh visible at low tide. It is in the morning, with blue herons raising their ankles deep in the water, and examining the horizon while the wind ripples over the surface of the bay.
But as she looks up, she flutters at the exposed blanket of pink fiberglass insulation.
Almost a year after Hurricane Helen landed in this small Florida Gulf Coast community, she lives at her home on Good Times Drive despite the need for a lot of work.
“They thought I couldn’t do it. And I said that a lot of people who are flashy women probably couldn’t. But “I have water, sewers, electricity. I can sleep in bed. I can flush the toilet and cook it.”
She lost everything in 1993. Her first home was in the same place, in a “stormless storm” or “storm of the century.” her belongings and her pet. And her mother, step-sister and nephew drowned when her tropical cyclone hit the beach in the middle of the night.
Thankfully, no one in Taylor County had died in Hurricane Helen. The Category 4 storm hit the area with sustained winds of 140 mph. It’s a silver lining that is often repeated among residents, especially when comparing Florida’s impact to North Carolina.
But it doesn’t erase the frustration with the insurance company, the building permit, the slow tourist season, or the battle with elected officials who say they are absent. Over 350 homes were destroyed in the storm, thundering Keaton Beach just 13 months after Category 3 hurricane Hurricane Idria. Many residents have moved away, with signs of “for sale” sitting in front of empty lots showing only concrete stakes where the home once was.
“It feels like we’re completely forgotten,” Mandy Adams said.
“Depression is real”
Five days before Hurricane Helen’s one year anniversary, Adams had moved his new furniture into the house.
Adams and her husband live in a camper van that is walking along the paths their friends have used. Over the past year, I have been waiting for constant calls, fighting insurance companies and building permits.
“It’s just weird that one person has the same insurance as the others, and others who have the same insurance don’t get anything,” Adams said. “It just makes me irritate.”
It was the third hurricane to land in Taylor County in 13 months when Helene struck. Idalia in 2023 was Category 3, and Debby, a hit in late July 2024, was Category 1, but Gov. Ron Desantis said the damage from Helene was wider than these two hurricanes combined.
Adams’ home in Keaton Beach was their main residence. While their flood insurance was paid, they had to hire an attorney to help them fight for their wind claims.
Fortunately, for Adams, the money from flood insurance helps them rebuild.
Many coastal residents had no property insurance at all, including blue. You will receive a daily or monthly salary for repairs. Others decided to either nail plywood over the windows or simply tear the rest of the house.
Near Adams’ residence there is a house with no front door or facade. Eye-conciliation means that there are no wooden cabinet doors and still gazing straight into the straight kitchen, placing items on the shelf.
When a Tallahassee Democrat, part of the USA Today Network, spoke to Adams, she was waiting for someone to install a new cabinet and countertop in the kitchen. Her walls had just been painted and were of a colour called “sea salt.”
She says it took a long time to get permission from the county for repairs, and other Keaton Beach residents complain about the long wait for permission, even if they have cash on hand from the insurance company.
Taylor County Administrator Lawanda Pemberton said all permit applications will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Taylor County is one of Florida’s 29 financially constrained counties. The county had additional resources after the storm, but these contracts ended six months later. The county has one building inspector, one building official, one permitting technician and two part-time code enforcement workers.
“We’re going back, we’re coming back on a small scale because we’re a rural community,” Adams said.
After her new gray section sofa was dropped off, she flipped the birth man over and described the improvements that had been made to her home. They robbed the side door, or elsewhere she can put it and water can enter.
She doesn’t want anything sentimental in her home now.
“I think depression is real. I think PTSD in another storm this year was real,” Adams said. “I don’t want to undo what I care about. I just want something exchangeable, and there’s nothing meaningless.”
“Just check us out.”
Shortly after the storm, then-President Joe Biden visited damaged parts of the Big Bend Coast and met with affected communities.
Adams said all his visits were to delay the 4-6 hour restoration work.
She praises two GOP lawmakers, Sen. Corey Simon and Jason Shoaf, for helping them clear the canals and roads. By March, more than 134,000 cubic yards of debris had been removed from Taylor County.
Still, there is still trash in the canals, wetlands and forests. Sheet metal, wood, doors, chairs and other debris are packed into the wood, hanging just like they did a year ago.
She hasn’t seen DeSantis in a year.
“Maybe he’s planning on coming in a year, but I haven’t heard of it,” she said. “Someone shows us occasionally and just check us out.”
Stephanie Weldon, owner of Keaton Beach Trading Post and owner of several rental properties on the coast, said residents who stayed formed the “Keaton family” and began to rely on each other.
Weldon was not the only business owner to lose the storefront. Not only did Keaton Beach Bums owners Jared and Monica Hunt lose their convenience store, they also damaged their home.
The couple and son stayed at the same campsite as Weldon.
“We were having family dinner. We had a little Charlie Brown Christmas tree because our son is two years old. We’re not going to let him have Christmas,” Weldon said.
She also bought matching pajamas. “No one complained,” she said, when it was time for the photo.
Weldon said the storm hype had gone and he had never seen an elected official in Keaton Beach since all the news trucks were back home.
“First, they listened to us and that was about it,” she said.
Weldon and her husband traded rental homes lost in the storm in a small home, but on a much smaller scale, as a way to keep the host.
Still, the tenants said they wanted to come and help, she said.
“We had one guest who wanted to have anything and they did fried chicken and all the fixtures and made homemade ice cream,” she said. “They brought us 300 gallons of gas, they had water, anything.”
Recently, members of the Keaton family held a meeting. They asked each other: are we staying or are we leaving here?
“We’re all here to stay,” Weldon said.
AnaGoñi-Lessan is a watchdog reporter Tallahassee Democrats who are part of the USA Today Network. Email her at agonilessan@tallahassee.com
