Idalia swamped their homes. They still dropped everything to try and put out a house fire
SUWANNEE — Billie Mincks didn't know where he was staying that night or how long he'd be displaced.
When Hurricane Idalia hit Suwannee last week, the river of the same name rose around the unincorporated town, which sits at its mouth.
The storm surge seeped into the rental home Mincks shares with his girlfriend, Tori Johnston. It ruined the furniture and fridge. Mud coated the floor.
He was moving some furniture out Thursday evening when a buddy drove by and pointed out the smoke down the road.
All the problems slipped from his mind far quicker than the floodwaters from his home.
The smoke’s source stood at the end of the road, a two-story house on a small peninsula surrounded by the Suwannee. Mud mired that road, gray from the limestone beneath.
The same shade of gray wafted from the house. It had survived the storm but was now on fire.
Mincks rushed over and joined a small group outside the house. They soon started throwing buckets of river water onto the smoking structure, as Johnston ran around to alert neighbors and others around, trying to get more help.
“Buckets, we need buckets,” they shouted. Those buckets were quick to come, as more and more people joined the group.
Like many houses in the fishing village, with an estimated few hundred people, this one was owned by someone who lived elsewhere. While the neighbors knew the owner wasn't there, they combated the flames with urgency. They wanted to save the house.
The hurricane had damaged or destroyed their own houses. But a neighbor needed help, and the Suwannee community didn’t hesitate to give it.
The faces facing the flames
And it wasn’t just buckets.
Neighbors brought fire extinguishers, and workers from a local landscaping company tried to use a water pump as an improvised fire hose.
The locals were joined by people from other parts of the state, including two USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida journalists and Ruben Ayala.
Ayala is one of the owners of Protek, a solar, HVAC and roofing company. From Tampa, he and a team traveled up to Suwannee and other hurricane-affected communities to help out and see if anyone needed his company’s services.
They were handing out water in the area when Johnston ran up and told them about the fire.
They, too, joined the fray.
“Whatever it takes to help out,” Ayala said.
Meanwhile, Gage Walker drove his utility vehicle down the highway.
He lives in Enigma, Georgia, but came to Suwannee to check in on his family’s house. They'll have to replace the furniture, walls and flooring. And their boats weren't where they left them.
“One of our boats is out in the woods,” he said. “We gotta go get it.”
But when he spotted the smoke rising from the house across the water, his focus shifted.
He couldn’t get close to the house – emergency vehicles blocked the road. So, he removed all his clothes except his shorts and a silver necklace and swam across the Suwannee. He refilled buckets while standing in the river, as others had done before him.
After he got out of the river, he joined a group helping firefighters slog hoses through the mud.
“I just knew I needed to help,” Walker said later that evening. He wore a shirt again, but it was wrapped around his right foot. He cut his big toe on something in the mud.
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Mud and water problems
While the firstcomers who fought the fire believed it was caused by water damage to its electrical wiring, which is not uncommon with hurricanes, Dixie County Fire Rescue’s Mandy Lemmerman said the fire was still under investigation.
Regardless, even though no one was home, and even after it became obvious the flames would destroy the house, she said it was important to dampen it as quickly as possible.
“Sea breeze helps ventilate and push that fire,” she said. “The more oxygen, the bigger the fire can get. And the closer the homes, the faster it can radiate and spread.”
That Thursday presented logistical problems, though.
They couldn’t get close to the fire. The first fire truck that arrived got stuck in the mud, and the others were “sliding all over the place,” said Lemmerman, the battalion chief. They had to use “a lot of extra hose” as a result.
Lemmerman emphasized that she didn’t want the public to ever put themselves in a position where they were harmed in the process of helping. But she said it was fortunate people like people like Ayala, Mincks and Walker were there to help with the hoses.
“The first arriving unit was a good 20 minutes away, and it’s just two men, and you need to wait for more and more people to get there,” Lemmerman said. “Anytime we can have, especially with long hose lays like that, just hands to be able to drag that hose… it's always super, super helpful and beneficial for us.”
The problems didn’t end with the hoses.
The water supply was down, so firefighters couldn’t pull anything from the hydrants. And while they could usually take water from the nearby river itself, the debris and low tide didn’t make that tenable. They used water from the fire trucks and tankers, and later shuttled those tankers to and from a water source a mile away.
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She said multiple responding firefighters needed medical attention that night, some requiring IV fluids. They're a small crew and the hurricane created a lot of work over long hours.
“They were just spent,” Lemmerman said, though she added that they’re fine now.
“It’s the point of not only mental exhaustion but physical exhaustion of fighting so much fire, having that gear on and dragging it through [the mud],” she said.
Other local governments and even the state came in to help. When USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida reporters left the scene on Aug. 31, a multitude of emergency vehicles passed them along the way.
#SuwanneeStrong
An hour before the fire, Frank Couch stood in the mud coating the first floor of his weekend house.
Furniture and other items had been removed the day before the hurricane, loaded in trailers or stuffed upstairs, and he was glad for it.
He was also glad the storm didn’t hit as badly as he expected. It veered more west than early projections had put it.
“We were expecting this house not to be here,” he said.
He doesn’t have home insurance. It’s gotten too expensive, he said, and he's heard too many stories of people getting their claims denied.
The insurance would cost him $12,000 annually. He estimated the damage to his home to be less than $20,000.
“I can fix my place after a couple years, saving 12 grand a year,” Couch said. “We’re just going to take all the drywall off, everything gone, and start over and put stuff in (that the water) won’t affect next time.”
He’d already gotten a lot of help from friends — and helped friends in return.
"Everybody helps everybody," he said. "It's just a great place to be."
A short while later, he was hurling water into and onto a stranger's burning house.
“Every able body that was around there, they all jumped in and helped,” Couch said. “That’s what I like about this place. Everybody seems to help everybody with everything."
Mincks, who has lived in Suwannee since childhood, said the evening confirmed what he already knew: "We are a pretty tight community."
Johnston said it changed her opinion about the town, where she's lived since 2021.
“To me, it looked like the community was very to themselves, and only really helped friends and family,” she said. “I see it a lot differently now.”
She has a sticker on the back window of her car, made by a local after the storm. It reads: “#SuwanneeStrong.”
How to help
Donate to the Red Cross by visiting redcross.org, calling 1-800-RED CROSS (800-733-2767) or texting the word IDALIA to 90999 to make a $10 donation. Sign up to volunteer at www.redcross.org/VolunteerToday.
Help feed those in the strike zone through Second Harvest of the Big Bend at FightingHunger.org/Idalia.
Donate to the United Way of the Big Bend at uwbb.org/disaster-relief-fund or text RELIEF2023 to 41444.
With Tallahassee escaping the brunt of Hurricane Idalia's wrath, this story is part of a continuing series profiling hard-hit communities. USA Today Network-Florida First Amendment reporter Douglas Soule is based in Tallahassee, Fla. He can be reached at DSoule@gannett.com. Twitter: @DouglasSoule.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: 'Suwannee Strong:' Hurricane-hit Florida village fights fire together
