‘We're still living with the aftermath': Floridians brace for fresh hurricane season

The Guardian

08-05-2025

Idalia. Debby. Helene.
Not visiting friends, not neighbors. All hurricanes that have not yet faded into memory for the residents of Taylor county in Florida where all three powerful storms hit in just two years.
'It's hard to look at these hurricanes as memories when we're still living with the aftermath and worrying about what's coming next,' said Thomas Demps.
After taking direct hits from Hurricane Idalia in August 2023, Hurricane Debby in August 2024, and Hurricane Helene in September 2024, Demps, a current county commissioner and former mayor of the town of Perry, said residents of the county are recovering and bracing at the same time as 2025's hurricane season now looms.
'Taylor county sustained an incredible amount of damage from the three major storms that came through, and we are still recovering,' he said 'We are very fortunate to not have lost any lives, but the damage to property and structures has been heartbreaking.'
But with less than a month before the start of hurricane season on 1 June, residents like businessman Jared Hunt are still recovering from the catastrophic damage from the past two years. In August 2023, Idalia caused major damage to Hunt's home, and the storm surge came within a foot of the Keaton Beach convenience store he owns with his wife. Still, wind damage and power loss caused the Hunts to lose more than $50,000 in food and supplies at the store.
Helene wasn't as merciful.
'Our house was damaged beyond livable condition,' Hunt said 'As far as the store goes, we came back to absolutely nothing. The canopy over the fuel dispensers is all that was left. The 3,000 sq-ft building I left to evacuate was gone. There was nothing to do but push the rubble to the road for pick up.
'We did get some money from our flood insurance but only about one-fifth of what the policy was for, and that went straight to the mortgage note. Our wind and contents coverage sent us a check around the end of March for $4,000.00.'
Hunt says he's trying not to worry about the hurricane season approaching, but it's hard not to when it hasn't been a year since Hurricane Helene destroyed his home and business.
'Our only options after Helene were to build 17ft in the air, or everything had to be road ready in case of another flood,' he explains. 'So while we fought with insurance, we bought a few 53-foot semi-trailers and rigged them up like campers with 50-amp services so they could be unplugged and moved away in a short amount of time.'
The Hunts opened their makeshift store last week.
'We are doing what we can to get through the summer and pay off some bills then we'll start navigating the rebuilding process,' he says.
More hurricanes make landfall in Florida than any other state in the country, so a hurricane could hit the state during any active hurricane season. Because scientific data shows that ocean and coastal waters are getting warmer amid the climate crisis, then it is likely that a hurricane will hit the state during an active season.
Danny Glover, the Taylor county emergency management director, has spent the past eight months preparing for the certainty of another hit - not the probability. Glover, who took the lead in Taylor county's efforts to recover and rebuild in October 2024, has flooding on his mind, as well as the terrible impact of hurricane-force winds.
Located on Florida's Big Bend – the Gulf coast region where Florida's peninsula curves into its panhandle, Taylor county's coastal areas 'are more vulnerable to flooding than ever before', Glover says.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), global warming and climate change are causing ocean warming and rising sea levels, which has fueled the increasing strength and frequency of hurricanes. The Noaa data projects sea levels to rise 2 to 3 feet by 2100.
Hurricane Idalia, a category 4 storm, devastated hundreds of homes and businesses on the coast and inland in the town of Perry. Debby arrived almost a year later, hindering recovery efforts and causing significant damage. And then Helene, a category 4, barreled across the county.
Helene caused catastrophic damage, particularly in coastal areas. Keaton Beach experienced the destruction of approximately 90% of its homes. Overall, between 250 and 300 homes along the coastline were rendered destroyed or uninhabitable, leading to estimated damages exceeding $50m.
The destruction extended inland in Perry, where the mayor, Ward Ketring, says the city has 'recovered fairly well, but there's still a ways to go'. Ketring, along with the city's other leaders, have used the past three hurricanes to prepare for the probability of another hurricane hitting the area as.
'We now have some of the best trained experts with storm preparedness and storm recovery,' he says. 'I wish we didn't have so much experience with it, but it wasn't our choice. The staff is getting more experience with each storm.'
But in a red state like Florida – especially one run by hard -right Republican governor Ron DeSantis – the role of climate change in preparing for hurricanes is never straightforward.
In May 2024, weeks before hurricane season began, DeSantis signed a law that deleted references to climate change from statutes in the nation's hurricane capital. Polls conducted in March and April 2025 by Florida Atlantic University (FAU) and by Mainstreet Research for MediaLab found that a majority of Floridians – 88% according to the FAU poll, are concerned that climate change is causing more frequent and increasingly destructive storms.
Dr Kevin Wagner, the co-founder of FAU's PolCom Lab, is not surprised that when it comes to climate change political lines are blurred in Florida. 'People's views are a product of their environment,' he explains. 'In Florida, where people experience the effects of hurricanes firsthand, voters may be more inclined to come to their own conclusions about storm intensity, regardless of their political affiliation,' said Wagner.
Long-time residents of Taylor county agree.
Real estate agent Ann Hodges suffered damage to her home, community, and the family's pine acreage, which created an economic drain on the family's resources, including their retirement funds. 'I have always understood that climate change affects the weather, the number and severity of storms and other catastrophic events such as floods and fires across the nation. My views have only been further reinforced by what we have seen and experienced over the past couple of years.'
Demps and Glover agree about the probability of another major hurricane making landfall in the county.
'Our Gulf waters are warming,' Glover said. 'And those warm waters become fuel for hurricanes.' However, both say the issue of climate change should not be a politicized when so many people in the county are still recovering from the past two years.
'I do believe the impact of climate change is real because we're witnessing the impact right now,' Demps said. 'It would be different if scientists were making these claims, and we weren't experiencing increasingly bad weather. But this should not be a political issue – where one side is right or wrong. No matter how we got to this point, we live here together, and it is going to take all of us to fix this problem.'
This story was co-published and supported by the journalism non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project