DUNEDIN, Fla. (WFTS) — Walking inside Cathy Rick-Joule's Baywood Shore's house, it's clear they've been through a lot.
The house is empty, save for some fans and a few appliances here and there.
The walls are cut from the bottom to about five feet up.
"I'm feeling defeated and very, very, very sad, not for just myself, but my neighborhood and this beautiful community of Dunedin," she said.
What used to be inside their home now sits outside on the curb, waiting for trash pick up. This is the same for every house in her neighborhood.
"To see the refrigerators and double stack washer dryers and very heavy furniture, all it looked like someone picked the house up and shook it, and everything was was in a different place from where it started," she recalled.
What makes this even harder is the fact that the whole neighborhood just went through the same thing a little more than a year ago, when Hurricane Idalia hit. Although, Idalia left less water inside their homes.
"Last year, when we had the flood, we had about 18 inches of water in the house," she said. "Having just spent the last year, repairing the house from Hurricane to Idalia last August, finally, everything completed in May and to now be going through this again with this beautiful community is just absolutely heartbreaking."
But through the devastation, Rick-Joule's found her reasons to smile in a few places.
One reason is her neighbor, Kathy Till, who has opened her home to them during repairs.
"I needed to. They're just around the corner, so they were able just to walk around and sort out their house, which they're doing now, as you can hear. And yeah, and they're good friends as well, even better friends now," Till said.
Till's home is three stories. While there was damage, she is able to stay.
"We had five feet of water in our garage. My husband lost lots of tools. The fridge was floating, or the things that we put up high were floating. But that's nothing compared to everybody else. They've lost their homes. We haven't lost our home," Till said.
"I couldn't be more thankful. I mean, she's opened her house yet again, for a second year, to my house, myself, my husband, our dog, and made us feel so comfortable and so welcome and right at home. You know, their house is our house, and they're wonderful people on top of it all, and have become incredible friends," Rick-Joule added.
Rick-Joule is also thankful for what the city of Dunedin has done for their community.
"The city has been very responsive. I mean, you know, there's only so much they can do, obviously, but they really seem to be just doing everything they can and really just talking directly to us as individual. You know, folks are reaching out to us, and they really care. They really care," she said.
The City of Dunedin has opened Highlander Pool's showers up to the public. Just up the road at the community center, there's a place to wash your clothes. They provided the Baywoood Shores neighborhood with Red Cross recovery buckets.
On a more personal level, both Cathy and Kathy say city leadership has reached out to them.
"Once this storm came, there was a lot of conversation on the front end. The first thing that happened is Sue Burness, Communications Director with the City of Dunedin, she reached out to us," she said. "The next thing was that we got a call yesterday from the Senior Administrative Assistant Lindsey Brush, and she gave me all sorts of information about what was available to our neighborhood, specifically what's available just in the City of Dunedin."
This working relationship between the neighborhood and the city has been a year in the making.
"Last year, Hurricane Idalia, it was uncovered that there's 11 major valves that feed this neighborhood, either the water going out or the water going in," she said. "There was all these valves that the intent was that when the water comes, you know, when the tide comes up, the tide, the valves would shut and keep the tide from coming in. When the water is ready, when the tide recedes, the water will run out. And none of those valves were functioning. "
The neighbors sounded the alarm on the problem, getting the ball moving towards repairs in November. They tell me today, 9 of the 11 have been fixed.
Unfortunately, the flooding from Helene came straight from water coming over the seawall, however.
The damage to the neighborhood shows just how severe that storm surge was.
It's a sight Kathy Till reached out to ABC Action News about, saying more people should see it.
"I thought this community, nobody really knows us. They don't really know who we are, and they don't realize how how flooded we were getting all the time," she said. "But it means something to this community, I think for them to, you know, see this."
Back-to-back storm events brought record storm surge, rainfall and winds to the Tampa Bay region. The question some are asking now isn’t where people should rebuild, but where we should let nature regain control.
