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.
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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.