CEDAR KEY, Fla. — Tim Delaino didn’t even consider leaving his home as Hurricane Idalia approached this week. His family has been in Cedar Key, a little island city in the Gulf of Mexico, for five generations, and they have weathered dozens of storms.
Delaino’s house is half a block from the water, but it’s on a ridge that rises 20 feet above sea level, a vantage point that gave him confidence, even as the storm sped through. The cedar tree in his front yard lost a few branches, but other than some debris, there wasn’t much to clean up.
While many of his neighbors were heeding the evacuation order Tuesday afternoon, Delaino was out fishing.
“I got some redfin and some mullet,” he said. “We’ll cook them up for dinner tonight.”
As Idalia churned northeast toward Georgia and the Carolinas on Wednesday, bringing with it hurricane-force winds and more fears of fatal flooding, communities across Florida’s Big Bend region were beginning to assess the storm’s damage.
Idalia cut an unpredictable path of destruction, rending some homes from their foundations while sparing others.
But as the storm moved on from Florida, residents and officials here were hopeful that they had avoided the deadliest, worst-case scenarios, releasing a cautious, statewide exhale nearly one year after Hurricane Ian caused catastrophic damage and claimed roughly 150 lives.
“This is ten times better than what I expected to come back to,” said Joe Brenner, standing outside of his intact home in the tiny coastal town of Keaton Beach, where Idalia made landfall.
Residents like Brenner returned Wednesday to a stunning sight: Oceanfront homes nearly unscathed by the storm. Brenner’s, a purple three-story house elevated about 12 feet, was stripped of its siding but dry inside.
The town had been spared, with almost no flooding. Even the mailboxes lining the main road were upright.
“It could have been worse,” Brenner said.
At least two motorists died while driving on the region’s rain-sodden roads, authorities said. The storm’s toll may rise in the coming days, but state leaders said they haven’t yet seen the telltale indicators of a high death count.
During Hurricane Ian, for instance, southwest Florida’s Lee County was inundated with frantic 911 calls from people drowning in their homes, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said in a news briefing.
“Just the feeling of dread those phone calls represented, you knew there was going to be a lot of problems,” he said. “We have not seen that in the same way on this storm.”
Geography may be partially to thank, as Idalia made landfall in a sparsely populated swath of the state. Even so, it was the first storm of its magnitude to hit this part of the state in more than 100 years, DeSantis added.
“There’s going to be a lot that’s going to be required to be able to clean this up and to get everything back up and running again,” he said.
That is especially true in the paper mill town of Perry, the seat of coastal Taylor County, where some 7,000 people live. Massive pines and oaks littered the streets on Wednesday, some pulling down power lines and puncturing holes in the roofs of businesses and homes.
Electricity was still out in most of the area and residents, many of whom did not evacuate, were sorting through their soggy belongings, trying to figure out where they’d go next. Roy Johnson, whose roof had ripped open during the storm, was packing trash bags in front of his home.
The 73-year-old retired rest stop worker had spent the tumultuous night hunkered down in his bathtub, clutching his Bible — “praying and trembling,” he said.
“Things started booming and falling out of the trees,” he said. As he walked through his waterlogged kitchen, dodging strewn spaghetti and broken glass, Johnson said he regretted his decision to ride out the storm.
“I should have known better,” he said.
Less than 40 miles south, in the Gulf Coast community of Steinhatchee, floodwaters swamped homes, restaurants and other businesses along the Steinhatchee River.
Fearing the worst, Fred “Trey” Mitchell evacuated his entire family — a first for the Florida natives. He even persuaded his father, 66-year-old Mitch Mitchell, to leave, enlisting several of his friends to pepper him with phone calls until he relented.
“He did leave, finally. I was so happy,” Trey Mitchell said.
And, according to a neighbor, he got out just in time.
“Mitch’s house is gone, flooded,” said Tom Willits, who runs a local seafood restaurant. “All the restaurants in town other than ours are flooded, too. It’s bad.”
Willits, who lives about 1½ miles from the coast, stayed to help friends stormproof their houses. But the water rose too high, even for Mitch Mitchell’s house, which was elevated over 10 feet. Webcam footage showed floodwater up to the roofs of some homes.
Don Timone, who lives in a mobile home in Steinhatchee, also stayed behind, confident that his dwelling stood on high enough ground. He lost power at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday and found himself praying that the metal signs whipping in the wind wouldn’t collide with his house.
“Does it get scary? Of course it does,” he said. “God didn’t — it’s not my time, apparently. I don’t know why he’s still got me here, but I’m here. … I’m lucky. I hope everyone else around here is lucky.”
In Dunedin, just north of Clearwater and across the bay from Tampa, residents like Jim McGinity were also counting themselves lucky. McGinity moved to the area in 2004, just in time to weather a run of four hurricanes. He was bracing for a big impact from Idalia, but the gauge at his house only registered about an inch of rain.
“Especially after last year” and the threat that became Hurricane Ian, he said, “this one could have done the same.”
Instead, he was wading through his neighborhood’s flooded roads with a pair of binoculars, looking for birds.
Along Tampa’s ritzy and now-flooded Bayshore Boulevard, the mood had also lightened considerably Wednesday, as residents shifted from bracing for disaster to celebrating another dodged bullet.
Lillian Ochoa, 23, brought her snorkel mask to the roadway.
“I’m just gonna place my head in the water,” she said, laughing.
Ochoa, a marketing account manager in Clearwater, was hoping to see gators, or maybe a stingray. But mostly, she was enjoying a welcome break from the stress of the past 24 hours.
“Maybe we’ll find a manatee,” she said.
Down the road, Michael O’Rourke, 63, watched water pool on the block facing his 1915 bungalow. His neighborhood was one of many across the state that flooded rapidly, but he felt confident residents would recover.
“They’ll be okay,” O’Rourke said.
Across the street, three girls — all apparently younger than 12 — waded into the waist-high water, laughing and filming videos on their phones.
“This is crazy!” one squealed.
Businesses across the region were shuttered on Wednesday, but some places exuded normalcy, even as rain continued to pour on and off. At the Old Northeast Tavern in a cobblestoned neighborhood of St. Petersburg, down the street from where a Mercedes sedan had been trapped in floodwater, beer was flowing and people were largely ignoring the Idalia updates on the television.
A sheriff on the screen was talking about statewide rescue efforts when Clay Houston, 33, reached for his cold Yuengling.
“I’m not leaving until it’s a Category 5,” said the sales representative who lives a block away. “And even then …”
Next to him, Carl Pearson, 71, sipped a Guinness and pointed out the bright side.
“We needed the rain,” the retiree said.
Back in Cedar Key, a sense that the community had escaped something potentially ruinous hung in the post-storm air.
Patrick Callen and Daniel Wal were among those who decided to stay on the island. They have only lived there for 2½ years, but their house is 100 years old. They have updated it with hurricane-tested windows and solar panels, which made them one of the only places with electricity after the storm has passed.
“I think the estimations were wrong about both of the severity and storm surge,” Callen said. “It almost seemed sensationalistic.”
The two were buzzing around town in a golf cart, like many of the residents who stayed behind. They were picking up debris and helping neighbors clear driveways and sidewalks.
The damage they saw along the waterfront, where Idalia had thrashed bars, restaurants and hotels, was sobering. But the town is resilient, they said.
“Cedar Key has survived so many storms,” Callen said. “It survived the Civil War. The town will rebuild.”
Cedar Key City Commissioner Sue Colson drove by in her golf cart and stopped to chat.
“This is sad,” Colson said after surveying the damaged businesses on the waterfront. “It could have been worse. But there’s a lot of cleaning up to do.”
Thebault reported from Los Angeles. Jared Leone in Dunedin and Rich Matthews in Steinhatchee contributed to this report.
