TALLAHASSEE, Florida – A single landfalling hurricane has the potential to set up a community for years. In the Florida Big Bend, many small communities have seen not one, not two, but three landfilling hurricanes in the past 13 months.
Beginning with Hurricane Idalia in 2023, then Hurricane Debby in August and now Hurricane Helene—it would be an understatement to say the people who live along Florida’s Nature Coast are tired and truly worn out.
That’s enough to make many throw up their arms, give up and move somewhere else. However, the people who live in these small, quaint communities aren’t going down without a fight.
It’s so easy to focus on the doom and gloom. You don’t want to sugarcoat it, either.
Plain and simple: Hurricane Helene is a devastating and catastrophic storm.
More than 40 people have lost their lives so far and thousands more have damaged or even destroyed homes. But what isn’t destroyed, is the spirit of people who have weathered yet another storm.
“Can I help you?” asked Linda Evans of After Hours Coffee in Perry, Florida.
The shop is located in the small town a little over an hour away from Tallahassee.
Evans opened up her shop on Friday like it was another regular, sunny day.
“It’s my retirement hobby,” she said. “I had a job. I didn’t want another job. I wanted something that I enjoyed doing.”
Linda lives in the coffee shop that’s attached to her home. The place where customers sit and sip their coffee is actually her living room.
It also happens to be where she hunkered down during Hurricane Helene.
“You could hear it,” she said. “It took off part of the side of the building back there.”
While Helene tore down part of her home, it could never bring down her positivity.
Gage Goulding: “Do you feel lucky with this?”
Linda Evans: “No, I feel blessed. It’s up to God. It got nothing to do with luck.”
A few towns over, they don’t each other, but they live a similar life.
“I’m here all day, every day sometime,” said Anna Davis, owner of Daylight Salon and Spa. “[A] hairdresser’s life.”
Davis spent the day sweeping up what was left of her glass storefront.
“The windows just couldn’t stand it,” she told KPRC 2′s Gage Goulding.
For hours, it rained inside her salon. Mud is now caked on the walls.
Her shop is ruined—yet again.
Gage Goulding: “This is not the first hurricane to hit this region.”
Anna Davis: “I mean, in what, 13 months this is our third one.”
But still, she was out not even a few hours after the winds calmed down to start cleaning up while drawing up an idea to open up.
“I just have to try to survive it and just rebuild and start over,” Davis said.
It’s something that both Anna and Linda have in common: a contagiously positive outlook on life’s most difficult moments.
“We can’t change the nature. Just have to face it,” Davis said. “Be strong, and tomorrow will come again.”
“I believe in the good Lord,” Evans added. “And he either protects you or he don’t. And what minor damage I have was him looking after what I had and protecting the things that I own.”