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.
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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.