DEKLE BEACH, Fla. — Sheila Blue sits on a picnic table underneath a house on 24-foot stilts.

If she looks to her left, she sees the marsh at low tide. It’s mid-morning, and a blue heron stands ankle deep in the water and surveys the horizon while wind ripples the surface of the Gulf.

But if she looks up, she sees the wind flutter the exposed blankets of pink fiberglass insulation.

Almost a year after Hurricane Helene made landfall in this small northeast Florida Gulf Coast community, she still lives in her home on Good Times Drive, even though it needs a lot of work.

“They thought I couldn’t do that, and I said a lot of people that are fancy ladies probably couldn’t, because it’s not all fancy fixed up,” she said. But “I have water, sewer and power. I can go to bed in my bed, I can flush my toilet, I can cook.”

She lost everything in 1993: her first home, which was located on the same spot, in the "No Name Storm" or the "Storm of the Century”; her belongings and her pets; and her mother, sister-in-law, and nephew, who drowned when the tropical cyclone hit the beach in the middle of the night.

Thankfully, no one in Taylor County died in Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm that battered the area with sustained winds of 140 miles per hour. It’s a silver lining often repeated among residents, especially when they compare the impact in Florida to North Carolina, where 86 people died in the storm.

But that doesn’t erase their frustration with insurance companies, struggles with building permits, the slow tourist season or elected officials they say have been absent. More than 350 homes were destroyed in the storm, which thundered through Keaton Beach only 13 months after Hurricane Idalia, a Category 3 hurricane. Many residents have moved away and “for sale” signs sit in front of empty lots with only concrete pilings to show there once was a home.

“I just feel like we’ve been totally forgotten,” said Mandy Adams.

'The depression is real'

Five days before the one year anniversary of Hurricane Helene, Adams was moving new furniture into her home. 

Adams and her husband have been living in a camper down the road that their friends let them use. The past year has seen constant phone calls, battles with insurance companies and waiting for building permits.

“It’s just crazy that one person has the same insurance as the other, and then the other people who have the same insurance aren’t getting anything,” Adams said. “It’s just frustrating.”

When Helene hit, it was the third hurricane to make landfall in Taylor County in 13 months. While Idalia in 2023 was a Category 3 and Debby, which hit in late July 2024, was a Category 1, Gov. Ron DeSantis said the damage from Helene was more extensive than those two hurricanes combined.

The Adams’ home on Keaton Beach was their primary residence. While their flood insurance paid out, they’ve had to hire an attorney to help fight for their wind claim.

Luckily for the Adamses, the money from the flood insurance is helping them rebuild, she said.

Many coastal residents didn’t have property insurance at all, including Blue. Some pay day by day or month by month for repairs. Others have nailed plywood over their windows or have decided just to tear the rest of their house down.

Near the Adams residence, there’s a home with no front door, no facade. Looking in means staring straight into a gutted kitchen, with wooden cabinet doors missing and items still on the shelves. 

When the Tallahassee Democrat, part of the USA TODAY Network, spoke to Adams, she was waiting for someone to install new cabinets and countertops in her kitchen. Her walls were freshly painted, a color called “sea salt.”

She said it took a long time to get the permits from the county for repairs, and other residents of Keaton Beach have complained about the long wait times for permits, even with cash in hand from their insurance companies.

Taylor County Administrator LaWanda Pemberton said every application for a permit is considered on a case-by-case basis.

Taylor County is one of 29 fiscally constrained counties in Florida. While the county did have additional resources after the storm, those contracts ended after six months. The county has one building inspector, one building official, one permit technician and two part-time code enforcement workers.

“There’s things coming back, it’s just coming back on a smaller scale because of it being a rural community,” Adams said.

After her new gray sectional couch was dropped off, she tipped the delivery men and described the improvements made to her home. They took away a side door, or as she put it, another place where water could get in.

She doesn’t want anything sentimental in her house right now because she saw how much some of her neighbors lost.

“I think the depression is real, I think the PTSD of another storm this year was real,” Adams said. “I don’t want to put anything that I care about back. I just want stuff that’s replaceable, nothing that has meaning.”

'Just check on us'

In the immediate aftermath of the storm, then-President Joe Biden visited the damaged portions of the Big Bend coast and to meet with the affected communities.

Adams said all his visit did was delay the restoration work for four to six hours.

She does credit two GOP lawmakers, Sen. Corey Simon and Rep. Jason Shoaf, for helping get the canals and roadways cleared. By March, more than 134,000 cubic yards of debris had been removed from Taylor County.

Even so, there’s still trash in the canal, in the marsh and the forest. Sheet metal, wood, doors, chairs and other debris are stuck on trees, hanging in the same way they did a year ago.

She hasn’t seen DeSantis in a year, either.

“Maybe he’s planning on coming a year after, I haven’t heard about it,” she said. “It would be nice for somebody to just kind of show face every once in a while, just check on us.”

Hurricane Helene leaves devastation in Keaton Beach

Even so, renters said they wanted to come and help, she said. 

“We had one guest that just wanted to bring whatever, and they did fried chicken and all the fixings and even made homemade ice cream,” she said. “They brought us 300 gallons of gas, they had water, anything and everything.”

Recently members of the Keaton family had a meeting. They each asked each other: Are we staying, or are we getting out of here?

“We’re all here to stay,” Weldon said.

Ana Goñi-Lessan is a watchdog reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat, part of the USA TODAY Network. Email her at agonilessan@tallahassee.com