Long road to recovery after Helene for Pinellas County residents

PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) — Little by little, load by load, friends are helping Kathy Behermann work on her 10 cottages on Madeira Beach.

“How can you not want to be here to help people?” said Belinda Blease, one of the people who is volunteering time to help.

The storm surge from Hurricane Helene has upended life in the cottages.

“Things are all shifted, wet, muddy, slippery,” Blease said.

For Behermann, the cottages are everything. Now the task ahead to recovery is nearly overwhelming and just knowing where to start is difficult.

“To really think what to do. This is not only my home, it’s my job, so I’m out of a home and I’m out of a job,” Behermann said.

Right now, they have no water and no electricity. Pinellas County officials said they are working to restore water service, but much of the system is damaged.

“It’s a major undertaking,” said Jeremy Waugh, director of utilities for Pinellas County. “We have more than 150 crew members here today, working on just restoring the water, getting the pressures back up and the main transmission systems and starting to restore individual businesses and account holders.”

Behermann said just having the water back on would make a big difference.

“It would make you feel at home,” she said. “You know, when you are at home and turn the water on at the regular time, you’re not comfortable, so we go to flush or something like that and it’s not there.”

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