AccuWeather's Leslie Hudson reports from a local business in Treasure Island, Florida. Ricky T's is one of many businesses still rebuilding six months after the Hurricane Helene devastated the area.
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00:00Activist Leslie Hudson covered Helene's aftermath for us last September and joins us now live from Treasure Island, Florida with more. Leslie?
00:09Hey there, Ari. Yeah, we're inside Rikki T's where we were just an hour ago on the outside.
00:16It's a little dark in here, but it's just because of the angle of the sun.
00:19But a couple of things I wanted to point out to you.
00:21Two key words that you'll hear in this island or on this island is
00:24resiliency and rebuilding. That is one of the things that you'll hear that mantra over and over again.
00:29Because about 70% of the businesses here are up and running, but about 30% are still not six months later.
00:37So it's really been an effort here across these barrier islands in the Tampa-St. Pete area to try and get
00:45these businesses back open. Because you have to remember if you're not open for business, you're not making money.
00:50So you can only imagine the economic strain this has put on not only businesses, but their families, their friends.
00:56So there is a concerted effort here to try and get things up and going as quickly as possible.
01:00And one of the places is here at Rikki T's where they are rebuilding basically from the ground up.
01:05They had over seven foot storm and sand surge when this system came through Helene,
01:11which was again 100 miles offshore of the Tampa-St. Pete area.
01:15But because of the high tide and the angle that Helene's eye kind of paralleled the coast, it really
01:22decimated this area, shutting it down for months.
01:24No one was in this area for the immediate weeks following Helene's landfall.
01:29And of course, it's been several months before you could actually get back on here
01:33and really do some easy commuting off and on the island.
01:36But joining me now is Rikki T's owner and that is Brad Pache and he has done some incredible work here.
01:42And we're going to talk to Brad right now. And Brad, tell me some of the things that you've done here to try and mitigate
01:48what Helene did to you six months ago in your business.
01:51Well, we took away a lot of the wood damage.
01:54We spent months just cleaning and cleaning and demo work. And then what we decided to do is build back stronger and better
02:01so that in case of Mother Nature again,
02:06we are a little bit more prepared, meaning that we have concrete.
02:09We reinforce concrete slabs beneath us where we walk instead of wood decking.
02:14So we started by pouring slabs under our feet and then we started by making concrete bars.
02:20This is amazing. This is all concrete now, right? It is. Including the bar top. From the bottom to the footer,
02:26eight-inch concrete center blocks.
02:28We poured the cells with the liquid concrete, the trucks, and then when that was all set up,
02:33then we built concrete countertops on top.
02:36So
02:36God forbid it comes back again. We hope to wash down, scrub down, and get back to work in a timely manner.
02:43And so just to reiterate you guys, Brad's hope is to try and reopen. He's only open on weekends right now.
02:50They're trying to get open here of seven days a week very soon.
02:53We'll have much more from Treasure Island throughout the morning and the afternoon. For now, we're reporting live. I'm Leslie Hudson. Back to you.
02:59Leslie, thank you. We appreciate it and we'll continue to be following our coverage marking six months since Hurricane Helene right after the break.