New tropical threat looms as Florida recovers from Hurricane Helene

AccuWeather

John Barkley of Treasure Island, Florida, spoke with AccuWeather on recovery efforts in his area after Hurricane Helene devastated the state. New tropical activity threatens the state once again.

Transcript

00:00The chief of the Treasure Island Police Department, John Barkley.

00:06Good morning, John. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks so much for being with us. And now,

00:10one week after Helene, we want to know where recovery efforts stand in Treasure Island.

00:16We were pretty much devastated by the storm surge. We are still at a point in many areas

00:22of our city without electricity. The water pressure is starting to come up and work better.

00:27And we do have our southern part of the town. The Sunset Beach area was really hard hit. And

00:32that's where the sand is literally piled up like snow. It looks like you went through

00:36a blizzard up north. It's that deep on the sides of the road. And how much infrastructure did you

00:41have, sir, the damage to the infrastructure? You're talking about the sand. You also had

00:46damage from the storm surge, certainly in the buildings. And were there any roads washed away

00:52or any other critical infrastructure that was damaged? I know you're talking about the water

00:58having some problems with that. Yeah, the interesting thing about this storm,

01:02we didn't have a wind event. I mean, it was over 100 miles off our coast, but shows you just how

01:05strong storm surge can be getting as deep as the estimates around 7.9 to 8.1 feet.

01:12We haven't had anything in this area for a very long time measurable that over four feet. So this

01:17was really literally double. And we knew we were probably in for it. We were looking at the

01:21estimates and everybody always wants to, you know, there's usually the worst case scenario

01:25estimates and everybody wants to go low. But the morning of the storm, we already had a high tide

01:30and we had a lot of a lot of a storm surge from that. And then we knew later on in the afternoon

01:35is going to be a lot worse. And that's exactly what happened. All right. So obviously, there's

01:40still a lot of help. What kind of help is needed to aid recovery efforts? And how can volunteers

01:46reach out? Just to show the scope of this, I don't think there's a business or a residence

01:52on Treasure Island that hasn't been touched by the floodwaters. A few of the structures are

01:57elevated. Some of the newer businesses are elevated. But, you know, Treasure Island was

02:00established in the 40s and 50s. So we have a lot of older single family homes that, you know,

02:05water and some of the homes were as deep as shoulder deep. Unfortunately, there's horrific

02:10stories come out of there now. We have people that didn't heed the warning to evacuate. And

02:14unfortunately, you know, we had hundreds of 911 calls over the night when we couldn't get to them

02:19because we were already four feet deep in water. And, you know, they just had all sorts of water

02:24that was stacked up. Some people we actually had somebody who drowned because they were trapped by

02:28floating furniture in their home. So unfortunately, there's been a lot of a lot of issues like that.

02:33In about 30 seconds, sir, because we're coming up on a hard break here.

02:36Put this in the perspective, this storm surge that you just witnessed.

02:41Yeah, it was like nothing I've ever seen. It came on and affected all the barrier islands.

02:47And the fact that it just kept coming and coming and coming. We're watching on webcams and

02:51and watching this go up. And we know, you know, in storm surge, six feet is a mile.

02:56You know, so that was the problem. We knew that we were going to a lot of people in desperate need.

02:59A lot of homes going to be damaged and destroyed. It's going to take a long time to recover.

03:03Well, we hope that plenty of people can help and volunteer and get Treasure Island

03:08back on its feet. We appreciate your update. Such an in-depth description

03:11of this area. Chief of Treasure Island Police Department,

03:14John Barkley. Again, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early.

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