“Staggering” destruction in a Florida city

STEINHATCHEE, Fla. – For nearly two decades, Scott Peters has poured his heart and soul into the bar at his Crabbie Dad's, just across the Steinhatchee River on Florida's Big Bend Coast.

It has weathered storms and floods, the ups and downs of tourism, the economy as a whole, and just about everything else the world has had to offer. And hurricanes have long been commonplace – and usually mild enough to make landfall in the city.

Locals threw hurricane parties, cracked open beers and howled in defiance of the wind. But after 2016, when Hurricane Hermine devastated the small town he calls home, they started taking the storms more seriously.

“We’re basically at sea level,” Peters said Wednesday.

That was before Hurricane Helene barreled ashore and pushed a wall of water forward. Helene's eye hit the shore a few miles away, and Steinhatchee was hit perhaps harder than almost any other place.

And Peters' Bar may have been hit the hardest.

He rode out the storm in Gainesville, about 70 miles away, and had not yet returned home to survey the damage.