Hurricane Helene leaves behind unbelievable damage in Keaton Beach

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Bill Wadell reported live from Keaton Beach, Florida, where people were starting to pick up the pieces in a town where buildings were completely leveled by Helene.

Transcript

00:00Our live team coverage continues right now with Bill Waddell, and Bill has been

00:04extraordinarily busy covering this storm in so many different ways for us here at

00:08AccuWeather. Bill, Keaton Beach, Florida, the storm surge has pulled away but it

00:13certainly left its toll.

00:17Yeah, Jeff, absolutely. It is just heartbreaking to see the damage here in

00:21Keaton Beach. Even just driving in here nearly a mile away from the water line

00:26is where we started seeing the storm surge damage. All of the debris, the

00:29force, the powerful force of that water from Hurricane Helene pushing so much

00:33debris nearly a mile inland at some point. I'm going to step out of the way

00:36and just take a look here. You could see what's left of some of the homes, some of

00:41the businesses, some of the buildings here in Keaton Beach just ripped apart

00:45by that powerful storm surge from Hurricane Helene. When you look at the

00:50video that our crews have been sending in throughout the day, this community was

00:54hit incredibly hard in the coastal region of Big Bend, Florida. This is some

00:58of the worst damage that our AccuWeather crews have seen so far from

01:01this powerful Category 4 hurricane, of course, causing so much damage, not just

01:06in Florida with that landfall late last night, but as this storm continues to

01:10move inland, dumping torrential rainfall, a lot of people affected, billions of

01:15dollars in damage. We heard from one person here, Keaton Beach, this is a

01:20tight-knit community. It means a lot to people in this part of Florida and they

01:24tell us it's heartbreaking to see this damage.

01:26It's a...

01:32See, this is a while.

01:36It's a mess.

01:40Our house is one of the only few standing, but it's hard to see all your neighbors.

01:46There was a home here, a home on these block stilts, a big two-story home behind us here,

01:54and then there was probably 12 or so houses out on Eazell Beach that are no

02:00longer there. This is gonna take a while to clean up and I don't know that we'll

02:04ever piece together all of it. We'll just do the best we can. I mean, it's a good

02:10community, so everybody to kind of team up together. We'll get it back like it

02:14was before, as close as we can.

02:17Yeah, just a heartbreaking situation for so many people. And again, there are

02:24authorities down here still checking on the damage. There's still welfare checks

02:28going on, people checking on loved ones and family members, maybe some of the

02:31region who did not heed the mandatory evacuation orders. But, Jeff, just really

02:35hard to see this devastation in person. We rode out the storm in Apalachicola

02:40last night and I can tell you that town fared pretty well through that storm. Of

02:45course, Helene hugging the coast a little bit of this region a little bit

02:49farther to the east of Apalachicola. It's incredible to see the difference of

02:53damage just 20 to 30 miles away. Some places not far from here, things look

02:58all right. They went through a bad storm, but again, not the level of

03:02destruction and heartache that we're seeing here in Keaton Beach. Just an

03:05unbelievable storm. Yeah, Bill, especially with a fast moving storm. If

03:09you're 20, 30, 40 miles east of the center of the storm, it's far more

03:14aggressive than if you're 20, 30, 40 miles west of the same storm because of

03:18the forward motion kind of adding to that extremely strong wind. Thanks for

03:21your reporting there, Bill. I know this stuff is not easy to do. And again,

03:25there's an emotional aspect to all this as well. So we wish everybody the

03:29absolute best there into Keaton Beach and beyond.

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