STEINHATCHEE, Fla. — Hurricane Helene ravaged the Big Bend region of Florida on Thursday night, plowing through towns like Steinhatchee.
The Category 4 storm made landfall with winds estimated to be 140 mph and a storm surge of 15+ feet.
On Wednesday, Taylor County Sheriff's Office Division of Emergency Management issued a mandatory evacuation — but not all residents obeyed that order.
"I am fully prepared for all of this to go underwater. I fully expect it. I have to because I have to be prepared for the worst," said Steinhatchee resident Kris Carl on Thursday. "When it comes to losing everything, we lose everything. We'll build back up again."
He said he's an online viewer of WPTV and reached out to reporter Joel Lopez when he saw Lopez would be riding out the storm near his town.
Lopez caught up with Carl on Friday morning to see how he was doing after he decided not to evacuate.
"It was honestly one of the scariest moments of my life," said Carl. "We are safe but this is the absolute worse this area has ever seen."
He sent us this video (watch below) that he recorded at 1 a.m. Friday that showed flood waters dangerously close to his elevated house.
Carl said the water got into his family's camper and flooded out his truck.
"We have trees down everywhere. I've got two down on my powerlines here," Carl said. "I've got a boat in my backyard that I don't own and I don't know where it came from."
The town was filled with catastrophic damage to homes, debris from the storm surge, countless branches, and roads closed from flooding.
One resident driving around on a golf cart Friday was Norman Cadiou, who also did not evacuate.
He said he could hear the heavy wind and the trees that were falling around his property.
WPTV first met Cadiou Thursday and said he wasn't going to evacuate because he wanted to be home to protect his house and belongings, as well as help his elderly neighbors who are also riding out the storm at home.
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"How did they fair?" asked Lopez.
"He's with us (pointing to his friend). They're all with us, and that's a blessing," Cadiou said.
Cadiou said he was in South Florida during Hurricane Andrew and said Hurricane Helene was equally as bad.
Taylor County officials told Lopez on Friday morning there were no casualties reported, but they had 100% power outages as of 9 a.m.
Residents who evacuated began returning home on Friday like Bobbi Pattison, who spoke with WPTV Thursday before the storm,
She was busy packing up to escape the storm in Gainesville.
Lopez was there the moment she came home for the first time.
"I've seen it like this before but not this bad," said Pattison.
She arrived with her daughter, Susan Merritt. Her house, which sits along the Steinhatchee River, suffered damage from the storm surge.
The entire ceiling of the house was gone, some walls compromised and the furniture inside destroyed.
"How long do you think it'll take you to recover?" asked Lopez.
"I'm not sure that I'll ever recover from it," said Pattison.
Pattison had just replaced all her belongings from Hurricane Idalia last year. During that storm her belongings were destroyed by 6 feet of storm water.
"I don't think that I'll rebuild here again," said Pattison.
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