HERNANDO BEACH – The destruction caused by Hurricane Helene along the coast is extreme. The devastation in Hernando Beach increases as you approach the Gulf of Mexico. The bottom stories of many houses that are directly facing the Gulf were destroyed by the surge. Standing in front of these homes, you can look through the shattered bottom story and see the Gulf behind. Some of these homes were designed so that in a bad storm, the bottom story would be washed away and the rest of the building would be structurally sound. Other homes are single-story and look to be completely destroyed.
To give you an idea of the power of the storm, the drywall around some of these homes is broken down into dime-sized pieces. Brian Elferdink explained that the water pounding on his refrigerator crushed it and pushed it out of its alcove and dragged it through the house and out the front door. Much of his first floor was decimated by the storm. There was a plethora of items strewn all about outside from the houses and in the canal, there was a full-sized pickup truck.
Speaking with long-time residents, they say that this storm surge was both higher, longer, and more churning than the 1993 No Name storm surge. Hurricane Idalia, which struck last year, caused significant damage but did not approach this storm in terms of ferocity. The hurricanes in the past have been compared to the No Name storm, but now there is a new benchmark against which to compare other storms…