HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Judi Butler’s front yard near Gibsonton is filled with generations of memories, and all she can do is cry. Furniture, pictures, and other keepsakes are piled into a mound at least ten feet tall.
“It’s heartbreaking,” she said through tears. “I just don’t know what to do.”
She lives on Oak Street, a peninsula that juts out into the Alafia River.
It was a street that had never flooded before until Hurricane Helene.
“Oh, it brings me to tears. Scares me. I sit back and think, maybe I should have done something different. But I never thought it would happen,” she said.
Ring video from her home shows inches of flooding becoming feet. As the river level peaked, she ultimately had waist-deep water inside her home.
Her son showed up in a boat to rescue Butler, her daughter, and two grandkids from the living room window.
“I was just panicking. We were all panicking. We didn’t know what to do. Had never been in that situation before,” she said.
Butler is not alone on Oak Street. It seems that most homes, including Chuck and Sue’s, flooded.
“I mean, there’s a lot of pain in this. There really is a lot more pain than you see. And we’re not that bad off. There are people that have lost their homes,” Chuck said.
Luckily, their home is two stories, but that doesn’t take away the sting of losing tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff downstairs.
“It’s not only the money. It’s the loss of items, loss of Christmas decorations, loss of books, loss of all of her piano music,” he said.
Even though the neighbors we talked to plan to rebuild and stay on Oak Street, a question remains: How will they find hope in a situation so hopeless?
It’s a question that remains unanswered for now.
“All the memories are gone, you know. All the pictures and things that I’ve saved for years and years. There’s nothing there,” said Butler. “All gone.”
As the neighbors try to help each other where they can, they say FEMA’s help is desperately needed.
The massive piles of debris littering communities across the Bay Area are not likely to end soon. We went to Town n Country, Baycrest, and Dana Shores to see how those areas are coming together.
