AccuWeather's Leslie Hudson reported live from Treasure Island in Florida, where rebuilding is underway as tourists return months after Helene wrecked hotels and critical businesses across the area.
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00:00Roughly 30% of the businesses along the barrier islands in the Tampa-St. Pete area of Florida
00:06remain closed or only partially open six months after Helene decimated parts of those islands.
00:13Hundreds of residents are still also waiting to get back into their homes that were wiped
00:17out from the hurricane that never got more than 75 to 100 miles off of Tampa's coast.
00:22AccuWeather's Leslie Hudson joins us live from a Treasure Island landmark with more.
00:29Hey there, Jeff. Yeah, you know, it's been six months to the day as we know, and as you mentioned,
00:36this hurricane really never even got that close to the Tampa-St. Pete area, but still managed to
00:42just cripple this area of western central Florida. Over my shoulder is the historic hotel called
00:48Thunderbird Beach Resort. It's been here for almost 70 years and has weathered many hurricanes
00:54and storms, but this one, Helene in particular, proved to be too much for this hotel to withstand.
01:01Unfortunately, the building codes in some of these older hotels are not up to par, and this one was
01:07not able to stay open. And there is good news on the horizon for this hotel. It is expected to be
01:13completely torn down and rebuilt, but it will be built to the safest building codes in the country,
01:18which is right here in the state of Florida. So hopefully they will be able to weather many
01:23future storms as we get into the next several years and decades. But the storm surge here,
01:31by the way, was about seven feet of water and sand, and that's why all of the first floors
01:36of these buildings and homes were destroyed. If we look at some of the video we shot in Pinellas
01:41County earlier today, a lot of the businesses and even the locals have been struggling to try and
01:46get their stride after Helene moved into this area. One of the main problems is that this is a
01:52huge tourism industry, and a lot of people come here for snowbirds for this time of the year and
01:58stay here six months out of the year. Well, unfortunately, a lot of their homes were either
02:02destroyed or are unlivable, so they are not here. And some of the tourists have also been a little
02:08gun-shy to come back as well, but we're starting to see some of that filter back in. We've talked
02:13to a lot of people here the last couple of days. We do hear that there are spring breakers, a lot
02:17of them here trying to put some money back into this area. Again, this was shut down for several
02:23months, and as you mentioned, there's still about 30 percent of the businesses here that are still
02:28not fully functional, but are trying to get back on their feet. When you drive around this area,
02:33it doesn't take too much to actually find homes that have either been completely destroyed
02:37or have already been demolished and are awaiting a rebuild. That's one of the big problems, trying
02:42to get those building codes and get everything, all the red tape in order so folks can actually
02:46rebuild. So, that's been one of the big problems, but folks are determined to build stronger and
02:51better than ever. Now, joining me right now is John. I'm going to mess it up, John. Jason.
02:58Jason Bezos. I knew I was going to mess it up, you guys. I'm so sorry.
03:04Jason is here, and we're going to talk about, you are the public information officer for Treasure
03:09Island. Talk to me a little bit about how things have been going here. We've talked before.
03:13Are you feeling encouraged this spring break? Oh, yes. We're seeing a lot of people out on
03:16our beaches the last two weeks. Especially, we've seen a lot of people. We had a big event about
03:21three or four weeks ago to bring people back to the beach that we did in conjunction with our
03:25Visit St. Pete Clearwater, and that brought out big crowds here. And so, our businesses are now,
03:29many of them are open. As you already talked about, some of the hotels are still closed and still
03:33rebuilding, and some of these businesses are still rebuilding. But so far, we've seen a lot of people
03:37come out, and they're enjoying their time here, and they're making the best of it because you can
03:40come here, and then you can go right over to St. Pete Beach, Madeira Beach, Downtown St. Pete.
03:44But right now, we're seeing a good outcome this spring break so far. How was this for you,
03:50you know, six months ago? Were you anticipating the night before
03:53a hulling hit? Were you anticipating what this area saw, or did it even surprise you?
03:58We are working with our emergency manager. We were talking about the impacts that could possibly
04:03happen. We weren't expecting as much of a storm surge as we got, and so it was shocking to see,
04:07especially the day of the storm. It was about 2, 3 p.m. There were still people out on our beach.
04:13It was sunny like it is now, and it seemed like maybe this wasn't, you know, nothing was going
04:16to happen to us. And then about four o'clock, I believe it was, the bottom just fell out,
04:20and the water just started coming up. We posted many videos of our fire department,
04:24police department, showing the water just coming over the wall, coming over the streets, and just
04:29came in as quickly as possible, and that's when we had to evacuate the island and get to our EOC.
04:33And so it was shocking to see how much water actually came on, and when you came back
04:37right after the storm, I was with our fire chief. When we came back right after the storm
04:41and the devastation you saw and how powerful water is, which is amazing. Yeah, but the one thing that
04:45we've all noticed is, especially after a big impact like this in an area that doesn't normally get it,
04:50the resiliency of the folks here has been incredible. Yeah, I mean, people came together,
04:55started rebuilding. We had some, you know, you have some hiccups as you rebuild because we got
04:58hit by two storms right after Hulleen. Milton came along and did its thing, and so it took some time
05:03to get, you know, permits going, and we got those going, and we got that worked out, and we got
05:07people rebuilding, and I think we're one of the better barrier, better cities on our coast here
05:12that's been rebuilding. And so we were one of the hardest hit, but we've come back stronger,
05:16and we're going to keep, continue to come back stronger. Awesome, thank you so much. All right,
05:19you guys, well, as you can tell, there is still a lot of work to do here in these barrier islands,
05:24but they are convinced and convicted to rebuild, and we look forward to seeing that process happen.
05:30For now, we are reporting live in Treasure Island. I'm Leslie Hudson, back to you.
05:34All right, thank you so much there, Leslie.