STEINHATCHEE, Fla. — Crabbie Dad’s bar was destroyed. Power lines and trees snapped like toothpicks. Houses yanked from their foundations, spilling sofas and silverware onto this town’s mangled streets.

A day after Hurricane Helene pummeled Florida’s Gulf Coast, residents drawn to the prospect of a quiet life on the water here were instead confronting the reality of being square in the middle of the state’s new hurricane alley.

“I’m not going through this again,” Richard Carmichael said as he and his wife cleared out the debris around their home for the third time in a little over a year. His plan for what to do next was clear: “Sell this as quick as I can.”

The last three hurricanes to hit Florida have all made landfall within one narrow stretch of land along the sparsely populated Big Bend region. First came Idalia, a Category 3 storm that made landfall in August 2023 just a short drive from Steinhatchee. Debby hit the riverfront community square on this summer. Helene came ashore a little farther northwest of Idalia, battering Steinhatchee as a Category 4 storm.

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Towns here have populations that number in the hundreds. But they offer a slice of “Old Florida” life that, at least until now, has kept residents rebuilding.

“This was our chance to come experience life on the Gulf,” said Matt Thomas, a resident of Cedar Key, south of Steinhatchee. He and his wife moved to the quirky, quaint island town less than three years ago. Now they are hurricane veterans. “This is our third ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ storm since we’ve been here.”

On the lone road into Cedar Key on Friday, sheriff’s deputies had set up a security checkpoint, as a helicopter circled overhead. One after another, National Guard troops in Humvees rolled toward the storm-battered town. Law enforcement search-and-rescue teams arrived. Tree-cutting contractors, utility workers and crews with bulldozers and dump trucks came and went.

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But again and again, Cedar Key residents who arrived were turned away. Not yet safe, authorities told them.

One drone video posted online by a storm chaser showed why. The once-serene streets of the island outpost were flood ravaged and covered in debris. Some houses had collapsed completely. The water carried others off their foundations. The first floors of many structures were blown out, as if an explosion had happened overnight.

Thomas and his wife had moved to Cedar Key from State College, Pa., drawn by its charm and sense of community. There were no giant chain resorts or huge restaurants. Instead, the rhythms of nearby fishing communities and federally protected bird sanctuaries nestled among a chain of barrier islands home to, among others, the elusive white pelican and roseate spoonbill.

The couple’s home had fared well during Idalia, but “this is an order of magnitude bigger than that,” he said. The couple caught a glimpse of their house in the drone video. It was still standing, though it remained unclear whether water had gotten inside or compromised the foundation.

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“We don’t know what to expect,” said Nina Jenkins, Thomas’s wife. “I don’t think we are moving back anytime soon.”

Joel Mattil barely recognized the town he saw emerge after dawn Friday. Mattil, 53, had stayed behind to weather Helene on the second story of the Cedar Inn, which sits just steps from the Gulf of Mexico, and where he had helped seal doors and cover windows ahead of the storm.

It was a sleepless night. The massive surge from Helene — at more than 9 feet — blew through the walls of the hotel’s first level, Mattil said, but the second story remained intact. The same was not true for everything else in town. The local market was devastated, along with a number of other businesses. As Mattil spoke, he said, he was looking at a deck that had floated to a nearby parking lot.

“I know a lot of people who are just done,” he said. “They are not going to come back.”

Unlike past storms that left Steinhatchee, a historic fishing and scalloping town, battered but recognizable, Helene destroyed local landmarks and hangouts, including Roy’s riverfront restaurant and Crabbie Dad’s bar.

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Fishing captain Kyle Wilson spent part of Friday checking in on Steinhatchee’s marina. Like much of the town, it was strewn with debris. The public boat ramp had been lifted up by the storm surge and left in the middle of a road. Wilson, 36, said he didn’t expect local watering holes like Roy’s to rebuild.

“It’s one thing when you’re gutted. But when you’re a complete loss? Some of these owners aren’t going to be able to do that,” he said.

Carmichael was of the same mindset. He and his wife had evacuated up the street to their church, First Baptist, to ride out the storm. They could hear the wind howling, ripping off bits of tin from other buildings that struck the church, he said. The church’s gym flooded, then the fellowship hall, but the sanctuary itself was unscathed.

Carmichael, who used to work as a commercial fisherman and sell real estate, said he was about done with living on the river. On Friday, he stood on the remains of his dock in white fishing boots, hauling river water to help his wife clean upstairs.

Aside from the damage to their home, the couple’s boat lift was also ruined. They’d just paid $10,500 to have it repaired after Idalia. His wife ducked out onto the porch to explain how high the storm surge had reached.

“This is the only time we’ve ever had it up here,” said Gwen Carmichael, 78, a former teacher. “We’re thankful to have our lives.”

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Chainsaws and engines buzzed nearby as neighbors removed downed cedars and oaks dripping with Spanish moss. For a lucky few, the cleanup appeared manageable. Pam and Gary Keen returned to their home and found heaps of debris in their front yard — lumber, seaweed and a mattress. The two-story house, which has been in their family for 90 years, had flooded, but only a few inches, nothing compared to the house next door, which had a cedar tree on the roof.

They had a generator and planned to stay with their three grandchildren.

“It’s part of living on the coast: You’ve just got to be tough,” said Gary Keen, 70, a mechanic. “It’s the good with the bad. I can’t think of a better place to live.”

Pamela Reed Revels drove her elderly parents back Friday to see the flooded riverfront ranch house where they had lived since 1968. The windows were blown out, the furniture and flooring churned by stormwater into a damp mess. They salvaged a wooden trunk of photographs and VHS tapes, but when they opened it, the contents were waterlogged.

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Her own home’s roof blew off. But Revels had no plans to leave Steinhatchee.

“It’s livable. We’ll tarp it,” she said of her mobile home, where she planned to host her parents. “They’re not going to want to stay anywhere else. This is just home.”

By early afternoon, Thomas had managed to hitch a ride into Cedar Key with a colleague who had clearance to pass through the law enforcement checkpoints. When he got to the couple’s home, his measured hopes from earlier quickly faded.

Helene’s surge had washed through their house, ripping out doors and windows, obliterating the kitchen, swamping the furniture and wrecking anything in sight.

“Jesus Christ,” he can be heard muttering on the cellphone video he filmed to show his wife the extent of the damage.

“It blew straight through the front and went straight out the back, and took everything with it,” Thomas said later, as his wife watched the video he had made in stoic silence.

When he returned to where she was waiting for him on the outskirts of Cedar Key, he carried in one hand an intact bottle of cabernet sauvignon.

“Everything we own was destroyed, but this was just sitting there,” he said. “It’s extraordinary.”