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.
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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.