Cleanup begins for those who stayed behind in Helene-stricken Florida towns

AccuWeather

AccuWeather storm chaser Leslie Hudson reported from Madeira Beach the day after Hurricane Helene's landfall, hearing from one man who rode out the storm on a boat.

Transcript

00:00Our team coverage continues right now with AccuWeather correspondent Leslie Hudson live

00:04in Madera Beach here in the area of Pinellas County, not far from Tampa and St. Pete.

00:10And Leslie, how's this going out there?

00:11I know that we've had some cavities here.

00:15Yes, unfortunately there have been five people that were unfortunately victims of helene here

00:22in Pinellas County.

00:23Two of them were in Treasure Island where we've spent a lot of our day, two were in

00:28Indian Rocks and then there was another person that was unfortunately killed also in Pinellas

00:32County.

00:33But we're here in Madera and we're underneath a restaurant, there's several restaurants

00:37and we're going to pan over and show you what a storm surge of seven feet can do to this

00:41area.

00:42So you can see all of the debris and rubble.

00:45It is completely destroyed down under here and if we continue to look, it's all behind

00:50me.

00:51So there is several tons of wood and debris from that seven foot surge that came in.

00:56And to boot, of course, there was this unbelievable surge that lasted for hours upon hours and

01:02created this long-standing damage in this area.

01:05But we met up with a captain, his name is James Dutton, we're going to introduce him

01:09right now.

01:10And he has some video.

01:11James actually rode out the storm last night, unbelievably, and if you guys can roll his

01:16video while we talk.

01:17James, tell me what went through your head, why did you decide to stay here?

01:20It was scary.

01:21So the boats is really how we make our living out here, it's all I've ever done since I

01:24was a kid.

01:25We just wanted to make sure that we kept them safe.

01:27We knew it was going to be a pretty good storm.

01:28We sat through quite a few really good ones.

01:31This is definitely probably the worst one that I've had in my lifetime so far.

01:34As you can tell, our area is really damaged, really been impacted.

01:38The community is going to have to really come together to make all this happen and clean

01:41up and get us right back up and at it.

01:43But we went out there, daughter was calling me asking if daddy's okay and it just got

01:48worse, worse, and worse.

01:50We sat out back in the bay on the hook, on the Florida Fisherman 2 and the Friendly Fisherman

01:54to keep them safe.

01:55The wind was howling, whipping, crazy noises, had the windows shaking, but we buckled down

02:01and I'll tell you what, I was definitely praying for the sun to come up the next morning.

02:05I was like, just please.

02:06I bet.

02:07Were you scared for your life?

02:08Did you think you ever were going to knock it out of it?

02:10No, I wouldn't say I was completely scared for my life, I just wanted to make sure that

02:14in the morning we still had a boat to work on and cover up a number of our eyes.

02:21Completely wild, can you imagine taking a storm that way?

02:25All right, yeah, that was from Captain James Dutton down there in Madera Beach, Florida.

02:30So Jeff, this is what we're seeing right now from Treasure Island, Florida, widespread

02:34just devastation from not just the storm surge, but the winds.

02:38We saw 100 plus mile an hour straight line winds gusting on shore as Helene made landfall

02:43last night.

02:44So some of these communities are going to be dealing with this aftermath.

02:46There's a car that had fire damage, so some of these communities are going to be dealing

02:50with the aftermath for weeks if not months to come.

02:53All right, all kinds of problems here tied to this storm and the storm surge.

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