John Barkley of Treasure Island, Florida, spoke with AccuWeather on recovery efforts in his area after Hurricane Helene devastated the state. New tropical activity threatens the state once again.
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00:00The chief of the Treasure Island Police Department, John Barkley.
00:06Good morning, John. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks so much for being with us. And now,
00:10one week after Helene, we want to know where recovery efforts stand in Treasure Island.
00:16We were pretty much devastated by the storm surge. We are still at a point in many areas
00:22of our city without electricity. The water pressure is starting to come up and work better.
00:27And we do have our southern part of the town. The Sunset Beach area was really hard hit. And
00:32that's where the sand is literally piled up like snow. It looks like you went through
00:36a blizzard up north. It's that deep on the sides of the road. And how much infrastructure did you
00:41have, sir, the damage to the infrastructure? You're talking about the sand. You also had
00:46damage from the storm surge, certainly in the buildings. And were there any roads washed away
00:52or any other critical infrastructure that was damaged? I know you're talking about the water
00:58having some problems with that. Yeah, the interesting thing about this storm,
01:02we didn't have a wind event. I mean, it was over 100 miles off our coast, but shows you just how
01:05strong storm surge can be getting as deep as the estimates around 7.9 to 8.1 feet.
01:12We haven't had anything in this area for a very long time measurable that over four feet. So this
01:17was really literally double. And we knew we were probably in for it. We were looking at the
01:21estimates and everybody always wants to, you know, there's usually the worst case scenario
01:25estimates and everybody wants to go low. But the morning of the storm, we already had a high tide
01:30and we had a lot of a lot of a storm surge from that. And then we knew later on in the afternoon
01:35is going to be a lot worse. And that's exactly what happened. All right. So obviously, there's
01:40still a lot of help. What kind of help is needed to aid recovery efforts? And how can volunteers
01:46reach out? Just to show the scope of this, I don't think there's a business or a residence
01:52on Treasure Island that hasn't been touched by the floodwaters. A few of the structures are
01:57elevated. Some of the newer businesses are elevated. But, you know, Treasure Island was
02:00established in the 40s and 50s. So we have a lot of older single family homes that, you know,
02:05water and some of the homes were as deep as shoulder deep. Unfortunately, there's horrific
02:10stories come out of there now. We have people that didn't heed the warning to evacuate. And
02:14unfortunately, you know, we had hundreds of 911 calls over the night when we couldn't get to them
02:19because we were already four feet deep in water. And, you know, they just had all sorts of water
02:24that was stacked up. Some people we actually had somebody who drowned because they were trapped by
02:28floating furniture in their home. So unfortunately, there's been a lot of a lot of issues like that.
02:33In about 30 seconds, sir, because we're coming up on a hard break here.
02:36Put this in the perspective, this storm surge that you just witnessed.
02:41Yeah, it was like nothing I've ever seen. It came on and affected all the barrier islands.
02:47And the fact that it just kept coming and coming and coming. We're watching on webcams and
02:51and watching this go up. And we know, you know, in storm surge, six feet is a mile.
02:56You know, so that was the problem. We knew that we were going to a lot of people in desperate need.
02:59A lot of homes going to be damaged and destroyed. It's going to take a long time to recover.
03:03Well, we hope that plenty of people can help and volunteer and get Treasure Island
03:08back on its feet. We appreciate your update. Such an in-depth description
03:11of this area. Chief of Treasure Island Police Department,
03:14John Barkley. Again, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early.