STEINHATCHEE – Patricia Blinstrup has lived through her share of hurricanes on her family’s five acre compound in this small coastal town in Taylor County.
But Blinstrup, 75, a retired nurse, never imagined awaking in the middle of the night with her bed floating in her bedroom, as a 10-foot storm surge pushed through her property.
“I didn’t expect this to happen,” she said Sunday, still reeling from the destruction and flooding Hurricane Helene brought to Florida’s Big Bend and four other states.
Blinstrup quickly thought of her two daughters, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, all of whom lived in the small homes besides hers, just a seven minute drive from the coastline.
“I was worried for my family because they were sleeping through it, and the water was way too high, and there was stuff floating and sewage from everybody’s yards,” she said.
Steinhatchee, with a population of 500, got hit especially hard during the 500 mile wide storm. Its marinas, businesses and homes have also been hit by Hurricanes Idalia and Debby in the last 13 months – and Hurricane Milton is expected to cause significant damage in Florida this week.
With Idalia and Debby having not caused too much damage to their property, Blinstrup and her family decided to stay in their homes for Helene. “We’ve been on this property since I was in third grade,” said Jodi Shipman, 47, one of Blinstrup’s daughters.
“We’ve never ever had any kind of storm surge,” said Shipman, the nurse at the local elementary school. “And when we left for Idalia, we ended up getting hit harder where we evacuated to and had no damage here. So our thoughts at that time were we were going to be OK this time.”
Shipman’s daughter, Jessica Downey, 30, a home health aide, recalled the moment she realized that Helene would do more damage to her community than initially expected.
“It was no longer Tallahassee that was a direct hit, so I immediately felt like a pit in my stomach,” said Downey, who has children ages 5 and 2. “Something was wrong. I was crying. My boyfriend came over, and he was like, ‘What’s wrong?’ And I said, ‘… We are going to be a direct hit.’”
The gas generator stopped working about 11:45 p.m., about 30 minutes after Helene made landfall, leaving the three homes on the compound in darkness as loud winds roared outside.
“I opened the front door to a flood of water coming in the door,” Downey said. “I didn’t know what to do. So, I was like, ‘Get out! Get out!’ I immediately slammed the door back shut, ran into my bedroom to put my shoes on – because I knew it was time to go.”
The property that connected all three homes was now flooded with storm surge waters. All 16 cars from various owners in the community who had parked theirs on the property – it was considered a high and dry area – were floating and hitting the homes as well.
With the water quickly raising to waist level and higher, Shipman prepared to head over to check on her daughter and mother, sticking her phone in her bra to keep it from getting wet.
“I went to step out my front door, and I didn’t know my porch had already washed away,” Shipman said. “So once I stepped out of the door, I was in that deep raging water.”
Miraculously, the phone tucked in the bra – seemingly on its own – dialed Shipman’s last contact she had spoken to earlier in the day. That was to a neighbor a mile away: Cherokee Strickland, 38, who upon hearing what was going on alerted her husband Joel Strickland, 40.
“Everything that we heard was nothing less but haunting,” said Joel Strickland, who like his wife works for a pest control company. “You know, the screaming and yelling, the rushing of water. At that point, there was no decision to make other than we had to try to get there.”
Strickland and his son, Anthony “Wade” Williams, 19, swam against the current of the storm surge, under trees and through sewage water, to get there, the father said.
They found Shipman yelling that her mother needed help. She recalled telling Williams: “You got to get my mother. You’re going to have to lie to her, and you’re going to have to tell (her) you’re emergency management – she has to leave.”
Downey said she told her family to stay on their porch to avoid drowning inside their home.
“We sat here, and we prayed,” she said. “After some time, the water just kind of receded and receded enough for us to walk back inside.”
While on the porch, Downey posted a video on social media to alert the public. “All I could think of was, if they don’t know we’re here, like, I have to let people know we’re here,” she said.
After two hours, around 2 a.m., the extended family were safe at the Stricklands’ house.
“You couldn’t have given me $1 million the night before the storm to say you’re going to have 10 feet of water on this piece of property; I would have bet against it,” Shipman said. “Yeah, I think that I think we’ve been humbled.”
More than a week after the storm, she and her family continue to try to salvage whatever belongings and mementoes they can. They are among the many displaced Floridians waiting to receive campers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a direct housing option. They plan on residing in the campers until their homes are demolished and rebuilt.
“It’s a waiting game, but keep us all here in prayer,” Blinstrup said. “We are so thankful to God Almighty that my family is fine.”
