Florida and Georgia residents living along Hurricane Idalia’s path of destruction on Thursday picked through piles of rubble where homes once stood, threw tarps over ripped-apart roofs, and gingerly navigated streets left underwater or clogged with fallen trees and dangerous electric wires.
“My plan today is to go around and find anything that’s in the debris that is salvageable and clean out my storage shed,” said Aimee Firestine of Cedar Key, an island located in the remote Big Bend area where Idalia roared ashore with 125 mph (201 kph) winds Wednesday.
Firestine rode out Idalia about 40 minutes inland. When she drove back onto the island hours after the storm passed, her heart sank. The gas station was gone. Trees were toppled. Power lines were on the ground. An entire building belonging to the 12-unit Faraway Inn her family owns had been wiped away. Another building lost a wall.
“It was a little heart-wrenching and depressing,” Firestine said.
Tropical Storm Idalia battered Florida and Georgia, leaving many people with ruined homes. Scientists say climate change is intensifying extreme weather events around the world. pic.twitter.com/24SDcX6fLf
— DW News (@dwnews) August 31, 2023
Before & after: This road in Englewood, Florida, was washed away by Hurricane Idalia. pic.twitter.com/ZyYO6nzNr4
— AccuWeather (@accuweather) August 31, 2023
Residents of Horseshoe Beach, Florida, returned to a scene of devastation as cleanup and recovery from Hurricane Idalia began along the state's Gulf Coast https://t.co/54u150Jxez pic.twitter.com/pFdlsXbqzL
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 1, 2023
At Horseshoe Beach in central Big Bend, James Nobles returned to find his home had survived the storm, though many of his neighbors weren’t as lucky.
“The town, I mean, it’s devastated,” Nobles said. “It’s probably 50 or 60 homes here, totally destroyed. I’m a lucky one, a few limbs on my house. But we’re going to build back. We’re going to be strong.”
Residents of the tiny town, most of whom evacuated inland during the storm, helped each other clear debris or collect belongings — high school trophies, photos, records, china. They frequently stopped to hug amid tears. Six-foot-high watermarks stained walls still standing, marking the extent of the storm surge.
Florida officials said there was one hurricane-related death in the Gainesville area, but didn’t release any details. The state’s highway patrol reported earlier that two people were killed in separate weather-related crashes just hours before Idalia made landfall.
A man in Valdosta, Georgia, died when a tree fell on him as he tried to clear another tree out of the road, Lowndes County Sheriff Ashley Paulk said.
As many as a half-million customers were without power at one point in Florida and Georgia as the storm ripped down utility poles.
The storm had 90 mph (145 kph) winds when it made a direct hit on Valdosta on Wednesday, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said.
“We’re fortunate this storm was a narrow one, and it was fast moving and didn’t sit on us,” Kemp told a news conference Thursday in Atlanta. “But if you were in the path, it was devastating. And we’re responding that way.”
Desmond Roberson of Valdosta was shocked when he took a drive through the city of 55,000 with a friend to check out the damage. On one street, he said, a tree had fallen on nearly every house. Roads remained blocked by tree trunks and downed powerlines and traffic lights were still blacked out at major intersections.
“It’s a maze. ... I had to turn around three times, just because roads were blocked off,” Roberson said.
Chris Exum, a farmer in the south Georgia town of Quitman, estimates that he lost half or more of his pecan crop from Idalia, which he said left “a wall of green” with downed trees and limbs.
Some of the trees are 40 to 50 years old, he noted. “It takes a long time to get back to that point.”
.webp)
Rescue and repair efforts were in full force Thursday in Florida’s Big Bend area, where Idalia shredded homes, ripped off roofs, snapped tall trees, and turned streets into rivers.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis toured the area with his wife, Casey, and federal emergency officials.
Jewell Baggett stands beside a Christmas decoration she recovered from the wreckage of her mother’s home, as she searches for anything salvageable from the trailer home her grandfather had acquired in 1973 and built multiple additions on to over the decades, in Horseshoe Beach, Fla., after the passage of Hurricane Idalia, Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
“I’ve seen a lot of really heartbreaking damage,” he said, noting a church that had been swamped by more than 4 feet (1.2 meters) of water. “When you have your whole life’s work into, say, a business that ends up under 5 feet (of water) – that’s a lot of work that you’ve got to do going forward.”
Tammy Bryan, a member of the severely damaged First Baptist Church, said Horseshoe Beach residents consider themselves a family, one largely anchored by the church.
“It’s a breath of fresh air here,” Bryan said. “It’s beautiful sunsets, beautiful sunrises. We have all of old Florida right here. And today we feel like it’s been taken away.”
Marina worker Kerry Ford said he was glad so many people in Horseshoe Beach ultimately decided to evacuate. He said he had to convince several people to go.
“I have seen these storms and I told them, look, this is not one you want to stay for because I knew it was going to be catastrophic,” Ford said. “It wasn’t going to be much left. And if you stayed, your first thing, I ask them, can you all tread water for a couple of hours? Because that’s pretty much what it’s going to be.”
Despite the widespread destruction in the Big Bend, where Florida’s Panhandle curves into the peninsula, it provided only glancing blows to Tampa Bay and other more populated areas, DeSantis noted. In contrast, Hurricane Ian last year hit the heavily populated Fort Myers area, leaving 149 dead in the state.
President Joe Biden spoke to DeSantis and promised whatever federal aid is available. Biden also announced that he will go to Florida on Saturday to see the damage himself.
The president used a news conference at the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s headquarters to send a message to Congress, especially those lawmakers who are balking at his request for $12 billion in emergency funding to respond to natural disasters.
“We need this disaster relief request met and we need it in September” after Congress returns from recess, said Biden, who had pizza delivered to FEMA employees who have been working around the clock on Idalia and the devastating wildfires on Maui, Hawaii.
Before heading out into the Atlantic Thursday, Idalia swung east, flooding many of South Carolina’s beaches and leaving some in the state and North Carolina without power. Forecasters said the weakened storm should continue heading away from the U.S. for several days, although officials in Bermuda warned that Idalia could hit the island early next week as a tropical storm.
In South Carolina, the storm coupled with already really high tides sent seawater flowing over sand dunes in nearly every beach town. In Charleston, Idalia’s surge topped part of the seawall that protects the downtown, sending ocean water into the streets and neighborhoods where horse-drawn carriages pass million-dollar homes and the famous open-air market.
Preliminary data showed the Wednesday evening high tide reached just over 9.2 feet (2.8 meters), more than 3 feet (0.9 meters) above normal and the fifth-highest reading in Charleston Harbor since records were first kept in 1899.
Bands from Idalia also brought short-lived tornadoes. One flipped a car in suburban Goose Creek, South Carolina, causing minor injuries, authorities said. No major damage was reported.
In southeastern North Carolina, more than 9 inches (23 centimeters) of rain fell in Whiteville, flooding downtown buildings. The downpour swelled creeks and rivers and forecasters warned places downstream on the Pee Dee and Lumber rivers could flood, although it will be well below the historic crests that devastated entire towns after Hurricanes Florence and Matthew.
Last year it was Hurricane Ian that drew a bead on Tampa Bay before abruptly shifting east to strike southwest Florida more than 130 miles (210 kilometers) away. This time it was Hurricane Idalia, which caused some serious flooding as it sideswiped the area but packed much more punch at landfall Wednesday, miles to the north.
In fact, the Tampa Bay area hasn’t been hit directly by a major hurricane for more than a century. The last time it happened, there were just a few hundred thousand people living in the region, compared with more than 3 million today.
“Tampa Bay avoided the worst again,” Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science, said via email. “A lot of it comes down to luck. It’s happened before (1848, 1921 ) and will happen again.”
Many in the area live in low-lying neighborhoods that are highly vulnerable to storm surges and flooding they have rarely before experienced, which some experts say could be worsened by the effects of climate change. In such an event, water would bulldoze its way into the relatively shallow bay from the Gulf of Mexico, also not very deep.
“Since the city is nothing like what it was a hundred years ago, the impacts now would be unimaginable. Tampa Bay is shaped and aligned perfectly to allow for huge storm surge,” McNoldy said.
That vulnerability was apparent as Idalia swept past, with storm surge swamping neighborhoods and busy roads, triggering shutdowns of some bridges between Tampa and the St. Petersburg area. Access to barrier islands was temporarily shut off, and several dozen people had to be rescued from flooded homes.
“Make no mistake, this hurricane left its mark,” St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch said at a news conference. “The reality is we are not done dealing with the consequences of this major storm.”
The Gulfport Casino along Shore Boulevard is flooded Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023 in Gulfport, Fla. Hurricane Idalia made landfall Wednesday in Florida as a Category 3 storm and unleashed devastation along a wide stretch of the Gulf Coast, submerging homes and vehicles, turning streets into rivers, unmooring small boats and downing power lines before sweeping into Georgia. (Chris Urso/Tampa Bay Times via AP)
Still, it could have been much worse. The storm surge in Tampa Bay was far lower than the levels experienced when Idalia came ashore Wednesday morning as a Category 3 storm near the rural town of Steinhatchee in the Big Bend region.
“We have thankfully not suffered a great deal of damage in our community,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said at a Wednesday news conference.
The last time Tampa Bay was hit by a major storm was Oct. 25, 1921, by a hurricane that had no official name but is known as the Tarpon Springs storm for the seaside town famed for its sponge-diving docks and Greek heritage.
The storm surge from that hurricane, a Category 3 with estimated winds of up to 129 mph (207 kph), was 11 feet (3.3 meters). At least eight people died, and damage was estimated at $5 million at the time.
Now the tourist-friendly region known for its sugar-sand beaches has grown by leaps and bounds, with homes and businesses occupying prime waterfront real estate.
The city of Tampa had about 51,000 residents in 1920. Today, there are almost 385,000. Most other cities have experienced similar explosive growth.
Nancy Brindley, 88, has been through around three dozen tropical storms and has lived in Indian Rocks Beach, outside of St. Petersburg, since 1970 in a beachside house that has been a gathering spot for three generations of family and friends. That’s where she rode out Hurricane Idalia with relatives.
Brindley “absolutely” thinks the Tampa Bay area seems to have some special protection, saying, “It’s just a perfect place in so many ways.”
“I think that in this region, that meant that you had all the fish you needed in the bay and you had the Gulfstream (current) that wasn’t too close to you. Fisherman called it the golden triangle. The sweet spot,” Brindley said.
A report from the Boston-based catastrophe modeling firm Karen Clark and Co. concluded in 2015 that Tampa Bay is the most vulnerable place in the U.S. to storm surge flooding and could sustain $175 billion in damage from a major event. A World Bank study a few years earlier rated Tampa as the planet’s seventh-most vulnerable city to major storms.
Yet for years, storms have bypassed it. Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, noted that only one of five hurricanes that hit Florida at Category 3 strength or higher has come ashore in Tampa Bay since 1851.
“In general, cyclones moving over the Gulf of Mexico had a tendency of passing well north of Tampa,” the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said in a report on the 1921 storm.
Also lurking in the waves and wind are the impacts of climate change and the higher sea levels scientists say it is causing.
“Due to global warming, global climate models predict hurricanes will likely cause more intense rainfall and have an increased coastal flood risk due to higher storm surge caused by rising seas,” Angela Colbert, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, wrote in a June 2022 report.
Amid all the science, a local legend has it that blessings from Native Americans who called the region home have largely protected it from major storms for centuries. Many mounds were built by the Tocobagan tribe in what is now Pinellas County that some believe are meant as guardians against invaders, including hurricanes.
Rui Farias, executive director of the St. Petersburg Museum of History, told the Tampa Bay Times after Hurricane Irma’s near miss in 2017 that many people still believe it.
“It’s almost like when a myth becomes history,” Farias said. “As time goes on, it comes true.”
In Florida, it won’t just be those with homes and businesses hit directly by Hurricane Idalia who might be stuck picking up the pieces. Thanks to a broken home insurance market, a particularly bad hurricane could spread financial fallout throughout the state, leaving residents from Pensacola to Key West stuck paying repair bills for years.
Beset by hurricanes made more severe and more frequent by climate change, as well as rampant fraud and tides of frivolous lawsuits, dozens of insurers in the state have closed up shop or stopped selling new home insurance policies in the state in recent years. (Farmers became the most recent big insurer to pull out of the state last month). Residents have increasingly turned to Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, a public entity established by the Florida government as the state’s so-called “insurer of last resort” for people unable to find affordable rates from private insurers. For more and more residents, though, Citizens is becoming the first and only option, especially for those with coastal homes at particular risk from hurricanes. In 2019, Citizens had about 400,000 home insurance policies on its books; today, it has more than 1.3 million, about twice as many as the state’s next-largest insurer.
With so many homeowners using Citizens policies, each hurricane season becomes a roll of the dice for almost every Floridian’s pocketbook. When a normal insurance company takes big losses, it goes bankrupt. But if hurricane winds destroy too many homes covered by Citizens policies and the insurer faces bigger bills than it can afford to pay, the public company won’t go belly up. Instead, such an event can trigger what is known as an assessment, wherein state law mandates that Citizens impose fees on private insurance policies across the state in order to cover its payouts. And it’s not just property insurance policy holders that may have to pull out the checkbook. If you live in Florida and have auto insurance, but can’t afford to own a home, you can still be stuck contributing to funds that pay for homeowners to rebuild after a big storm. “We have one of the highest populations of fixed-income senior citizens in the country,” says Mark Friedlander, a spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group. “We have many low-income households that are literally living paycheck to paycheck. They can't afford this.”
That situation last occurred after the 2004-05 hurricane season, when 10 hurricanes left Florida residents paying off Citizens’ $1.7 billion tab though 2015. Currently, the insurer has about $4.8 billion in the bank, and there’s a chance that Idalia could break that budget, though that’s less likely now that the brunt of the storm has missed Florida’s most populated areas like Tampa. But there are still many months left in the Atlantic hurricane season, and a lot of warm water offshore that can serve as fuel for powerful storms. “We probably only need one or two more [hurricanes] to make landfall [this season] before Citizens has to do an assessment,” says Charles Nyce, a professor of risk management and insurance at Florida State University. “When you have 1.3 million policyholders, that $4.8 billion is going to go very quickly.”
There’s no easy solution. Laws passed in the Florida legislature last year have cut down on some of the fraud and excessive legal filings that had been choking the state’s private insurers, and Citizens is trying to offload some of its bloated policy rosters to the private market.
But other forces are still pushing in the wrong direction. One reason Citizens is flooded with policies is because it’s legally barred from raising rates fast enough to stay in line with the private market. Private insurance rates in Florida have climbed sharply in recent years; Citizens' rates are generally about 40% lower, according to the Insurance Information Institute, and the state government recently rejected a request from Citizens’ management to impose a 12.1% rate hike. That could keep prices lower for policyholders but ultimately cost more residents in the longer term. As Freidlander puts it: “It’s a recipe for a hurricane tax that would be applied to all Florida consumers.”
Ron DeSantis had just been sworn in as a member of the House in 2013 when he voted against sending $9.7 billion in disaster relief to New York and New Jersey, two states still reeling from the damage of Hurricane Sandy.
“I sympathize with the victims,” the Florida Republican said at the time but objected to what he called Congress’ “put it on the credit card mentality” when it came to government spending.
Now, a day after Hurricane Idalia pummeled Florida less than a year after Hurricane Ian’s destruction, DeSantis is not objecting to federal borrowing when it’ll help his disaster-stricken state. As Florida’s governor — and a 2024 White House contender — he is in regular contact with President Joe Biden as the state seeks dollars from Washington to rebuild from the storm wreckage, assist rescue efforts, and aid displaced residents.
This is part of a tradition: Florida Republicans have a history of supporting government assistance for their state’s natural disasters while frequently rejecting broader packages designed to lessen the impact of these emergencies — torn between their constituents’ priorities and their party’s position on reining in the federal debt.
DeSantis’ vote a decade ago was based on his opposition to the Sandy package’s “additional pork spending,” a spokesperson for his presidential campaign said Thursday. Florida GOP lawmakers in both chambers frequently release similar statements after voting against disaster money, citing the country’s sky-high deficit as the determining factor.
But one Florida Republican calls that position increasingly untenable in a state that so frequently finds itself at ground zero for catastrophic hurricanes, just one of the litany of disasters that scientists expect to become worse as the planet warms.
“It’s always understandable why people, in theory, would vote against federal aid when it doesn’t affect them,” said Carlos Curbelo, a former Miami-area GOP member of Congress. “But when you live in Florida, that position is unsustainable.”
DeSantis probably “regrets” taking that vote on Sandy, he added. “He is now in a position of requesting federal aid for hurricane relief for the second year in a row. And these are major asks. These are billions upon billions of dollars.”
It’s been almost 11 years since then-New York Republican Rep. Peter King dared his GOP colleagues to meet their “moral obligation” to help natural disaster-torn communities — a plea that 179 House Republicans, including DeSantis, ultimately rejected.
But DeSantis — as a Republican and a Floridian — is not unique in his relationship to federal disaster spending. The state’s congressional delegation has a history of idiosyncratic voting patterns on legislation that would seek to respond to, or mitigate the impacts of, extreme weather events that are direct results of the worsening climate crisis.
Republicans from Florida have repeatedly voted to send federal disaster relief to their own state, at times vocally pushing for it.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), for instance, has said he will demand “an immediate vote” next week on a bill to refill the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s coffers.
“I will not allow Washington to continue playing games with disaster aid and the lives of those needing our help,” Scott said in a statement.
More broadly, Florida Republicans in Congress have for the last decade largely toed the party line on climate politics, refusing to support legislation that could be perceived as hostile to the oil and gas industry while embracing measures that would help their state in more immediate and tangible ways respond to climate change.
Curbelo predicts it will soon become harder for Florida Republicans to cherry-pick what they are willing to accept and sacrifice.
While Florida has always experienced dangerous hurricanes, he said, it has become especially vulnerable to violent storms, sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and heat waves.
“The state is under a lot of stress in terms of insurance issues,” said Curbelo, who spent his two terms in Congress working to push his party to acknowledge the climate crisis.
“Markets are not forgiving; they expose risk and weakness. … With every storm, with every major flooding event, the pressure on Florida members to support a broad climate policy agenda is going to grow.”
Lost ‘bipartisan tradition’
The fight over Sandy funding marked a shift in the debate over what responsibility members of Congress owe one another when faced with natural disasters.
As lawmakers were preparing to adjourn the 112th Congress in the first days of January 2013 after an extended legislative session to address the “fiscal cliff,” House GOP leaders abruptly canceled a vote on Sandy aid amid outcry from conservatives who didn’t want to spend more government money.
After King and other Republicans revolted — and shamed their leadership — a vote was convened swiftly upon reconvening for the 113th Congress on Jan. 15.
The relief bill was passed, 241-180. All but three Florida Republicans voted “no” on the grounds it spent too much money — also DeSantis’ argument at that time.
Jeremy Redfern, a DeSantis press secretary, told POLITICO’s E&E News that “we have no time for politics or pettiness” when asked if the governor wishes he had voted differently in 2013.
“As a member of Congress, DeSantis supported emergency disaster relief funding for Hurricane Sandy, but he did not support the additional pork spending that ended up in the final relief bill,” Bryan Griffin, press secretary for DeSantis’ presidential campaign, added in a separate statement. (Republicans at the time complained that the Sandy package continued to fund a depleted National Flood Insurance Program with money the government didn’t have.)
“As governor,” Griffin said, “DeSantis will of course marshal all available resources (state and federal) to aid those in need during recovery.”
Dan Weiss, a veteran climate advocate, observed that “Sandy was the turning point” in what came next for how congressional Republicans have since approached disaster relief funding votes.
“It used to be extremely bipartisan, like so many other things involving money,” he said. “Peter King came from the bipartisan tradition of providing disaster relief to states based on need.”
Florida Republicans have, by and large, gone on to support sending money to avert weather catastrophes, but typically only if their own state was included — and only as stand-alone propositions, not as part of larger spending packages.
The state’s House GOP delegation, for example, unanimously supported an $81 billion disaster aid package in December 2017 to help Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and California rebuild after a series of natural disasters that year, including Hurricanes Irma, Harvey and Maria.
But the delegation split in February 2018, when that disaster money was folded into a larger government spending bill then-President Donald Trump eventually signed into law.
At that point, five Florida Republicans in the House voted against the bill while 11 supported it, siding with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and then-Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in the other chamber.
In 2019, all but two Florida Republicans in the House backed legislation that would, among other things, mitigate the damage done to their state from Hurricane Michael. In the Senate, Rubio and Scott, who had by then unseated Nelson, voted “yes,” too.
Then came Hurricane Ian in 2022. Congress included language in the bill allowing FEMA to tap $19 billion to respond to a slew of natural disasters, including Ian. Every Florida Republican in the House voted against it. Scott opposed it in the Senate; Rubio didn’t vote.
Looming ‘political liability'
Florida Republicans have rallied around other policies to protect their state’s specific environmental interests.
They have continued a time-honored tradition of joining with Democrats to oppose oil drilling in their state’s portion of the Gulf of Mexico, an activity some of them argue could hamper activities at nearby military bases and which all of them see as a risk to the peace, health, and safety of Florida communities. But they’ve also criticized the Biden administration’s efforts to limit the practice in other states.
GOP members of the Florida congressional delegation have also typically supported major federal investments to restore the Everglades, the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States.
At the same time, they have not fought back against specific development and mining projects in the area that the Environmental Protection Agency and Florida conservation groups say could threaten endangered species and fragile ecosystems.
Ultimately, said League of Conservation Voters vice president of political affairs Craig Auster, these positions won’t make a difference if Congress isn’t supporting policies to drive down greenhouse gas emissions.
“We’re not going to protect Florida coastal communities, and we’re not going to protect the Everglades, if we aren’t addressing climate change,” Auster said, “because climate change is the biggest threat to both of those things.”
There have been some occasions since 2013 when Florida Republicans in Congress engaged with Democrats on legislation that would have made targeted, long-lasting contributions to disaster preparedness and resiliency.
In 2019, the House passed the “Reforming Disaster Recovery Act,” which would have required that all post-disaster rebuilding projects funded by certain federal dollars comply with the newest construction codes, which account for the realities of climate change — elevating buildings and designing structures to withstand intense winds, for instance.
The measure advanced in a 290-118 vote, with five of the 71 Republicans favoring it hailing from the Florida delegation. But it has since languished after the Senate failed to take it up.
Yet in the fall of 2013, the Obama administration got little GOP buy-in when it established the Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience to advise on how the federal government could respond to the needs of communities at the forefront of the climate crisis.
Supporters had hoped Republicans would get involved, but not a single GOP federal or statewide elected official joined — not even then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Weiss noted, “even though his state suffered extensive damage due to Superstorm Sandy.”
Auster, the League of Conservation Voters vice president, sided with Curbelo: For Florida Republicans, and DeSantis, it’s going to become harder to stay on the sidelines.
“It’s all well and good to say, ‘the government shouldn’t be fighting climate change,’ until your big insurance companies are going to stop providing insurance for unsafe places, and if people can’t get help when their homes are destroyed, and when people are losing their lives to wildfires and floods and hurricanes,” Auster said.