On the southern tip of St. Pete Beach, among tilted palms and sand-sprayed picnic tables, a sheriff’s office car rolled slowly through a community at the beginning of recovery from the second hurricane to make landfall on Florida’s west coast in the last two weeks.

While the story of Hurricane Helene was written in close-call rescues, drownings and flooded buildings — the wreckage of which still lines hundreds of miles of Pinellas roads — that of Hurricane Milton was defined for many by a dizzying combination of relief and exhaustion on the back of immediate heartache.

The Tampa Bay region was spared the surge that forecasters said could have reached 15 feet. But just days after residents first returned to their homes to clean up debris from one deadly storm, Milton came as another hard blow.

“It’s almost like a fight or flight feeling,” said Kelcey Marsan, 28. “You don’t have time to sit and cry. You have to call FEMA, get the stuff out of your house. It’s a lot.”

On Friday afternoon, Marsan was moving into her new second-story apartment in Treasure Island, where she and her boyfriend relocated after their rental home in St. Pete Beach flooded.

The couple didn’t evacuate during Helene, and had to make an escape by paddle-board in the middle of the night, so when evacuation orders were issued, the pair — like many who had learned from the prior storm — fled.

It was a story echoed around the bay.

Though bridges to the islands were reopened on Friday, allowing residents to return, the beach towns remained largely lifeless. On the intracoastal of St. Pete Beach, Cindy Phillips was one of the first in her neighborhood of Vina del Mar to return. Her home was destroyed during Helene, and she lost most of her furniture. Comparatively, the damage from Milton doesn’t seem so bad, she said.

There’s some shell-shock to the last two weeks, Phillips said. But she also feels gratitude, she said, a pile of still-soggy furniture waiting for pick-up on her curb. She shook her head and shrugged.

“At least it’s still standing,” Phillips said of the home her family built in the 1970s. “There’s something to build upon. If Milton had gone 20 miles north, this house probably wouldn’t be here.”

Phillips said she has felt thankful for her community these past two weeks. She has seen neighbors helping neighbors, strangers helping strangers. She feels confident that her community will rebuild.

“That’s the beauty of living here,” Phillips said. “Even those affected are helping each other.”

North in Treasure Island, neighbors Garen Yaghdjian and Lisa Luciano sat together on Yaghdijan’s porch taking in their street, still scattered with debris. A yellow house with blue trim had a pile of wreckage stacked nearly to its roof.

Here, and along the islands, the damage of the two storms melts together, making it at times hard to know what was from Helene and what was from Milton. But for Yaghdjian, whose palm tree lay sideways on the debris he cleared from his house, there wasn’t much of a question.

“The first one is devastating,” Yaghdjian said of the storms. “And then you take another hit.”

Further north in Madeira Beach, Tracy Loader-Sherman returned home to find limited damage from Milton. Her house, which is raised, fared relatively well in Helene — only the garage flooded. But she feared Milton’s winds and potentially record-breaking storm surge.

“It’s a lot. I know I’m not the only one, but I feel overwhelmed,” said Loader-Sherman, whose house is elevated 16 feet.

Returning to little more than a downed fence on Friday, Loader-Sherman said she feels like she won a trophy. Still, it hurts to see her community struggling. One street over, where homes sit at sea level, many lost everything.

Back in Pass-a-Grille, Byron LaBare was out for a run, taking in the ghostly community.

“It’s so eerie,” said LaBare, whose parents live on the barrier islands. “Pass-a-Grille on a Friday afternoon is usually hustling and bustling.”

He scanned Gulf Way, where, during busy season, visitors compete for parking spots. The stretch of road was empty.

For LaBare, the neighborhood is almost holy — “like heaven.” He said emotions were mixed as he watched Milton’s path shift on Wednesday from his home in St. Petersburg.

“I get chills. It’s melancholy,” said LaBare. “People are getting hit no matter what. There’s no positive (to the track shifting). You don’t want it to go anywhere.”

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