'Not a building untouched': Hurricane Idalia cleanup begins after destruction from Florida to Carolinas

Homes were ripped to shreds by storm surge and extreme winds in the hardest-hit areas of Florida's Gulf Coast when Hurricane Idalia crashed ashore as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday. Small coastal communities like Cedar Key and Horseshoe Beach took the brunt of the storm before it lost wind intensity as it plowed inland.

The aftermath was becoming clear in the three days after Idalia struck. Trucks were tossed around like toys by the destructive force of water driven inland by the hurricane. Metal was twisted and strewn about as boats were ripped from their mooring. Debris clogged canals and heaped up in piles over highways as trees were stripped and toppled over in many areas.

There was "not a building untouched by the storm surge," storm chaser Aaron Rigsby reflected on the small Florida towns devastated by Idalia's wrath in an interview on AccuWeather Prime with AccuWeather Senior On-Air Broadcaster Geoff Cornish.

By all accounts, the road to recovery will be lengthy after the Big Bend of Florida sustained one of the worst strikes from a hurricane that it has experienced in years -- or even in decades.

"Hermine was the last big one that flooded in here 2016. There are parts of the island that absolutely got more surge this time around, and others that may be about the same," Cedar Key, Florida, resident Doug Lindhout told Trisha Gates, who was reporting for AccuWeather. "We're just a small island, and when we have surge that comes in, it's meaningful."

Cedar Key, home to just 800 full-time residents, touts itself as a "haven for artists, writers and ‘adventure' tourists, who find the unspoiled environment their inspiration." The famous naturalist and writer John Muir even visited the port city in 1867 as he sauntered across the nation, where he remarked upon the beauty of the region. But, as CNN reported, it's no longer a haven, and the beach has been littered with storm debris and widespread devastation.

But the disaster could have been even worse. Idalia had undergone rapid intensification over bath-warm waters of the eastern Gulf of Mexico, growing into a Category 4 storm with peak maximum sustained winds of 130 mph by 5 a.m. EDT Wednesday.

In the final hours leading up to landfall, Idalia lost some wind intensity in a process called an eyewall replacement. During this process, which is common for long-lived tropical systems, the eyewall, home to the fiercest winds, collapses before being replaced by another larger, more intense eyewall. Idalia was a Category 3 storm with winds of 125 clocked by the time it struck near Keaten Beach, Florida, at 7:45 a.m. EDT Wednesday morning.

A satellite image of Hurricane Idalia as it made landfall in Florida on Wednesday morning. (NOAA/GOES-EAST)

Another factor behind Florida escaping the worst disaster: Idalia was a compact hurricane, with hurricane-force winds only extending out about 25 miles from its center.

Idalia's official death toll stands at one, although there were two men killed in separate weather-related crashes amid Idalia's rampage across the Southeast on Wednesday. The Florida Highway Patrol confirmed to AccuWeather that at least one of those fatalities was not linked to Idalia. Another man was killed by a fallen tree in southern Georgia, according to The Associated Press.

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Days after the storm ransacked areas from Florida's Big Bend to southern Georgia and the coastal Carolinas, residents and business owners returned in earnest on Thursday and Friday, where permitted by officials, beginning the arduous task of picking up the pieces.

However, even the clean-up process has come with added challenges.

Temperatures have topped out in the upper 80s to the lower 90s, each day since Idalia made landfall, and additional rain and thunderstorms have disrupted cleanup efforts and helped to boost humidity levels.

"It's hot, and the humidity," Tammy Wilkes, a Cedar Key resident, told Gates while cleaning up after the hurricane on Thursday. "We also have a supermoon, so our tide is coming up on the streets, and so we've got water everywhere. Plus, the heat is so bad."

All of that heat and humidity is a recipe for mildew and mold growth, another issue survivors will need to combat.

More than 60,000 electric customers in Florida remained without power on Saturday morning, three days after Idalia made landfall, according to PowerOutage.us. People who are relying on generators for electricity are facing not only the added expense of purchasing fuel but also long lines at gas stations. Outages may last several more days as utility workers scramble to repair broken lines and snapped power poles that were damaged during Idalia.

President Biden declared a major disaster in Florida on Thursday morning in Hurricane Idalia's wake.

"The President's action makes Federal funding available to affected individuals in the counties of Citrus, Dixie, Hamilton, Lafayette, Levy, Suwannee, and Taylor," the White House said in a statement.

Biden will travel to Florida on Saturday to visit some of the hardest-hit areas of the state.

Other officials and lawmakers commented on the weight of the disaster and the burden that recovery will place on "fiscally-constrained" areas that were affected, as US Rep. and former leader of Florida's Division of Emergency Management Jared Moskowitz put it to CNN.

"There are some communities that may never look the same and others that will get rebuilt that will look slightly different," Moskowitz told CNN. "This is a life-changing event for some of these counties."

Idalia unleashed a record storm surge in some parts of Florida's Big Bend. As Idalia marched across the Southeast and emerged back into the Atlantic, a historic storm surge was also triggered along portions of the Carolina coastline.

In Charleston, South Carolina, the blue moon made the storm surge worse, with a video showing feet of water inundating the downtown on Wednesday evening. A NOAA tidal gauge registered a storm surge of almost 2.5 feet at that location. The total water level was recorded as 3.47 feet, preliminarily ranking it number five, just below Hurricane Irma in 2017 and Matthew in 2016.

At Springmaid Pier in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the water reached 9.1 feet, ranking as the number six highest measurement since the 1980s, but falling short of levels recorded during Ian last year, which caused waters to rise to 10.5 feet.

The wind also picked up in the Carolinas by Wednesday afternoon. The stormy conditions forced Charleston Airport to shut down for a time, AccuWeather's Emmy Victor reported from South Carolina.

Most of the water had receded by Thursday, and residents and tourists ventured back out as crews got to work in cleaning up the mess that Idalia unleashed.

"We've noticed some damage around the battery and debris, but other than that it's been really great to walk around," Swati Kelley, a Texas resident, told Victor on Thursday.

Additional reporting by AccuWeather's Bill Wadell, Tony Laubach, Brian Lada, Jesse Ferrell, and Emmy Victor, with contributions from Aaron Rigsby and Trisha Gates.