Storm surge washed incredible amounts of sand into Florida towns

AccuWeather

Hurricane Helene blasted not just water, but huge amounts of sand on to city streets in the heart of the St. Petersburg-Tampa metro area.

Transcript

00:00AccuWeather correspondent Leslie Hudson live in Madera Beach, Florida.

00:04Leslie, I actually got to visit Madera Beach back in March of last year.

00:08It's a cool place, but, wow, what a lot of destruction there.

00:11This was more than just street flooding.

00:13It really was, Jeff.

00:18It has been unbelievable to try and put into words the scope of the cleanup

00:22that is going to be in here over the next couple of months.

00:25You can see this big old boat here.

00:29This is probably a dry dock, so, of course, this was not in the water,

00:32but it was knocked over from that storm surge last night.

00:35And then as Dave pans over, look at these big dunes.

00:39This is what covered the road here, which is Gulf Boulevard, last night,

00:44and it's five feet deep in some areas.

00:46They have been a steady stream of these bulldozers in and around this area,

00:51but I wanted to show you some video we shot earlier today.

00:54You may have heard about these boats that were on front yards of people's homes.

00:58Check this out.

00:59Now, there was about seven or eight boats that spanned about two to three blocks,

01:04and they were completely crossing over four lanes of a highway with a marina

01:09that was several hundred yards away from where they landed.

01:13So that just shows you the power of that seven-foot storm surge

01:16that was in the area last night that moved those boats,

01:20again, probably around seven to ten of those boats,

01:23across those four lanes and onto those property.

01:26But we also wanted to show you some of that sand

01:28because that's really the story here,

01:30that storm surge that pushed that incredible level of sand onto the Gulf Boulevard here.

01:37That's why the people that live here cannot come in.

01:40The Pinellas County Sheriff's told us that they had 500 9-1-1 calls

01:44in the scope of six hours last night,

01:47and folks were trying to get out.

01:48They could not leave. They were stuck.

01:50And you'll notice today there's been this slow cadence, if you will,

01:55of Hurricane Helene survivors and these refugees, if you will,

02:00that are trying to get off this island,

02:02and the only way they can do so is by foot.

02:04So it's a heartbreaking scene here.

02:06No power, no water, no electricity.

02:08Folks trying to get out of harm's way and get to some type of normalcy,

02:12but they have to walk off the coast by foot.

02:16And as you can see, there's several of them here.

02:18It's a steady stream of folks that have nowhere to call home tonight.

02:21We don't know how long that will take.

02:23It's going to be a very long while before they're actually to come back and live here.

02:27We think months is what we're being told before this area of Pinellas County will open up.

02:32For now, we're reporting live in Madeira Beach.

02:34I'm Leslie Hudson. Back to you.

02:36All right. Thanks for your reporting there, Leslie.

02:37And again, this is right in the heart of the St. Petersburg and Tampa Metro area.

02:42Not some far-removed, isolated vacation destination,

02:46but very much in the heart of the Tampa St. Pete Metro in Pinellas County.

02:51And there you can see a lot of outages continue there.

02:53Favoring the coastal side of the county there.

02:55But then the power outage numbers.

02:57The percentage of each county without power is indicated here in the maroon.

03:01And this stripe of deep maroon, it goes so far inland.

03:06This was a storm that had tenacious forward speed.

03:09It took time for the winds to decrease.

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