C T Online Desk: The hot Florida sunshine is broken by a gentle breeze, carrying with it salty sea air.
But the mood is anything but idyllic as the town of Keaton Beach assesses the damage from Hurricane Idalia, which left overturned trees and destroyed homes in its wake after making landfall nearby Wednesday morning.
“I think we fared very well compared to our neighbor friends who are missing part of their roof,” says Laurie Brenner, returning home after evacuating ahead of the storm.
“We have siding damage, but so far I’m glad to see the house is still standing,” the 57-year-old hairdresser adds.
Consisting of little more than two narrow streets and a canal, Keaton Beach, in the northwest of the state, is near ground zero of where Idalia landed after traversing the Gulf of Mexico.
As Idalia, which weakened to a tropical storm later Wednesday, continues to dump rain and cause flooding across the southeastern United States, residents who left are trickling back and the state of Florida is only just starting to put together the total cost of the wreckage.
In Keaton Beach, that destruction included an office with a single wall still standing, or a home missing its entire second story, the interior exposed like a dollhouse. Overturned mattresses suggest it once could have been a three-bedroom.
Elsewhere, at least three people were killed in Idalia-related incidents, according to news reports. Hundreds of thousands of customers lost power.
