Suzanne Whelehar squeezed Nancy Parker’s hand as the friends walked slowly toward the mobile home, careful not to step on debris. Both women had tears in their eyes.

Parker had a bad feeling about what she might see when she arrived to her home at Harbor Lights Club in Pinellas County’s Bay Pines community, but somehow, the damage from Hurricane Helene’s storm surge exceeded even her worst expectations.

A high-water line stood more than three feet up the side of her home, a sure sign that inside there would be water damage, too. Across the street, a neighbor had a boat toppled over and nearly jutting inside the living room. One house down, there was no living room at all. Helene’s surge had ripped off the house’s wall and a rush of water pushed all furniture into a corner.

”It’s a complete disaster.” said Whelehar, as the sun was coming up from behind her. “It’s horrible.”

Two houses down, the back room from where Candy Manfull, 57, could look out over Long Bayou while she worked no longer existed.

“This was supposed to be our retirement home,” Manfull said.

When they found the property, it felt like a dream, she said. It seemed impossible to be on the water for less than $800,000.

Like many residents of the mobile home park, Manfull couldn’t find anyone to insure the property, she said. But she’d heard that Tampa Bay was protected from storms like this —something about an Indian burial site or particular gulf currents.

She doesn’t think she’ll be able to rebuild if the house is unrecoverable.

Nobody warned Mary Romeo, 64, that such devastation was possible when she arrived from Toronto in July.

She’d watched storm surge trickle over the seawall during hurricane Debby, assured that nothing worse was possible.

”This was something totally different,” Romeo said.

At 9 p.m., water came rushing in through the door, the floor vents belching brackish sludge.

In total the house filled with a foot of water, leaving a brown water mark on the white drywall.

”We were sitting up on the dining room table,” she said.

“At one point I starting calling people asking if they could come rescue us in a kayak. They thought I was kidding, but what else were we going to do?”

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