Scared by Helene, Everyone in This Florida Beach Town Evacuated for Milton

Chris Miller rode out Hurricane Helene just over two weeks ago inside his picturesque yellow home across from the Gulf of Mexico in Bradenton Beach, a tiny Florida city on a barrier island. As the storm surge rose, he readied a wet suit in case he needed to escape.

As a huge wall of water swept away his next-door neighbor’s house, he called the mayor, who lives down the road.

“I told him, ‘Bev’s house is headed your way,’” Mr. Miller recalled on Friday.

So when Hurricane Milton bore down this week, with Bradenton Beach directly in its path, Mr. Miller knew that he had to evacuate.

“After we saw what we saw,” he said, “we couldn’t stay.”

Neither did anyone else, Bradenton Beach officials believe — the first time in recent memory that even the most dedicated die-hards had no interest in riding out the storm. The forecast was simply too scary, and the memory of Helene — and Ian, another frightening storm two years earlier — was too fresh.

“Most of the time, we have a few stragglers,” Mayor John Chappie, who also stayed on the island for Helene, said on Friday. “I don’t think we had any this time.”

After two storms in two weeks, residents are picking up the pieces and once again confronting the calculus of living in Florida as climate change makes hurricanes more frequent and intense.

But even now, after Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, some in Bradenton Beach insist that they will stay, captivated as they are by Florida, its water and (most of the time) its weather.

Milton blew Mr. Miller’s home sideways off the pilings that elevated it 15 feet above sea level. He intends to make it habitable again, though his savings are gone and he does not have property insurance. He said he could not imagine a life away from the glittering, blue-green water where he has surfed or paddle boarded every day for 15 years.

“I don’t have an identity without being here,” he said as an area official posted a notice on his home forbidding entry. “It kind of feels like the island kicked me off. But I took the risk, living out here — I’m the one, and I don’t expect any handouts.”

Some may abandon the coast, unable to justify the cost of rebuilding on a regular basis. But June DeBaun, like Mr. Miller, finds it hard to imagine doing so.

“We fell in love with this breeze,” Ms. DeBaun said as she looked over Sarasota Bay from one of the decks of her three-story home in Bradenton Beach on Friday. “It’s so difficult to go somewhere else. It’s just that island aura.”

Ms. DeBaun and her husband, Dan, knew that their house on Sixth Street, built a few years ago to withstand a Category 5 storm, would weather the blows from Helene and Milton. But as the couple, who are in their 70s, grow older, they wrestle with the tension between their deep love for the place and the accumulating stress of hurricane preparation, evacuation and cleanup.

The DeBauns returned to the house briefly on Friday to survey the latest damage, which was less severe than that inflicted by Helene. That storm swept through their garage, flooding a car and destroying personal treasures that included some of their wedding photos.

Mr. DeBaun joked that the damage to his backyard created a good excuse to redesign it more to his liking. “There’s nothing you can do except look at it and say, What’s next?” he said. “When you walk over to the Gulf on Sunday morning with a cup of coffee, it’s enough to keep you here.”

Bradenton Beach sits across Sarasota Bay from the city of Bradenton, north of Sarasota, near where Hurricane Milton came ashore along Siesta Key. The storm cut a deadly path across Florida, killing at least 12 people as of Friday, half of them in tornadoes that spun along its edges.

The city’s population doubles in the winter as snowbirds and vacationers flock there to soak up the relaxed atmosphere and sweeping white sand beaches. The community lies near the middle of Anna Maria Island, a nine-mile-long barrier island in the Gulf.

Hurricane Helene made landfall more than 200 miles away near Perry, Fla., surprising residents of the Tampa Bay and Sarasota regions when it led to catastrophic storm surge.

Bradenton Beach residents were not allowed to return to the city by car for nearly a week after Helene. Brenda and Ronney Wade came back by boat to check on the vacation cottage that they have owned on Fourth Street since 2013.

“There’s two different worlds that coexist here,” Ms. Wade said: full-time residents, and owners of second homes like her husband and her, who know that their storm troubles do not compare to people who lost everything they owned. “That’s a whole different kind of trauma.”

The Wades had cleaned up — tossing out all of their waterlogged furniture onto the curb, ripping out drywall, securing a contractor — by the time Milton threatened. By Tuesday, the day before Milton’s landfall, the city was desolate.

Even Mayor Chappie, 72, who had experienced Helene’s surge rising up to his knees inside his house, left ahead of Milton.

“It was coming for us,” he said. “You get out of the way.”

This time, the Gulf did not surge as much. Sarasota Bay did rise, though to a less destructive level. The real damage came from Milton’s winds.

Mr. Miller returned to 12th Street on Friday to find his house tipped against the one next door. He had worked 16-hour shifts for years to afford to raise the house to what he thought was a safe height.

On Fifth Street, Rex Geissler was again cleaning out the two-unit, aquamarine, bay-front house that he owns as a rental property. Mr. Geissler, who lives in Colorado, flew in after Helene to take care of the house and eight others that he owns on Anna Maria Island. Before Milton, he had managed to strip out four feet of drywall and bleach the house’s wooden studs to discourage mold. He had also dropped a sleeper couch on his right foot and fractured his pinkie toe.

Milton brought a few more inches of water into the house than Helene had, he said. Hobbling around in a foot brace, Mr. Geissler and his son, Jonah, 19, threw damaged items onto the street.

“We’ve had so many cancellations,” Mr. Geissler said of his rentals. “My bank account has plummeted down to practically zero — and that’s before we pay for the necessary repairs.”

The Wades returned on Friday to find debris scattered around their Helene-battered home, but little additional damage from Milton.

The couple can afford to raise up their cottage, which sits at ground level. But they do not want to, because what they love about Bradenton Beach is its quaint look.

Ms. Wade worries now that two misery-inducing storms may drive her neighbors away.

“I wonder how many people will move inland,” she said.

More on Hurricane Milton

• Falsehoods Disrupt Recovery: Experts warn that weather-related disinformation can rapidly escalate into real-world risks and distract from aid.
• What It Was Like in the Eye: Here’s our reporter’s account of a harrowing night in Sarasota, Fla. — different from anything she has experienced as a native of New England.
• Over 3 Million Without Power: Downed power lines and scattered debris caused widespread power outages in Florida that may prove difficult for utility companies to repair.
• Would His Houseboat Survive?: A man’s boat had survived several storms the last three years. But after Milton swept through, he wasn’t sure he would have a home to return to.
• Mental Health Harms: Research shows that experiencing repeated disasters makes people more vulnerable to mental health issues, and prolongs the time it takes to recover.