‘I thought we were going to die’: Florida couple escapes Helene’s storm surge

RUSKIN, Fla. (WFLA) — “I cut the drywall back,” Tim Tarrant said, walking through his Hillsborough County home in tears.

“I got to get all the drywall out, and I have a brother from Michigan coming,” Tarrant said. “He’s going to bring me his 5th wheel.”

“I’m going to park it out here, and probably live in it for a while,” he said.

Tim and his wife Michelle have lived in their Ruskin home for 38 years and had never flooded.

So for Helene, they diligently checked the water on a gauge they set up in their front yard.

“I said, ‘let’s check it in 15 minutes.,”‘ Tim Tarrant said. “It had come up 8 inches in 15 minutes, and I said let’s go.”

“By the time we got [Michelle] and the dogs in the truck, it was already waist deep,” he said.

“One minute we were dry and the next minute we were fighting for our lives,” Michelle Tarrant said.

Michelle Tarrant said she didn’t think they were going to make it.

“I was praying out loud,” she said. “I was saying, ‘do we stay here together and just…'”

“Honestly, I thought we were going to die, so I thought let’s just do it,’ Michelle Tarrant said. “It will be okay.”

At that point, the water was over the hood of their F-150 pickup truck.

So, Michelle Tarrant weighed her options.

“Do we try to get out and make it somewhere?” she said. “But there was nowhere where we were, there was nothing we were out in the middle of nowhere.”

“That’s what I was thinking about, how are we going to die?” she said. “Together or out of the car?”

But they survived, and now have to deal with Helene’s aftermath.

“It was devastating,” Michelle Tarrant said. “Devastating in the fact that there were so many people that we see everyday that we wave to, because that’s what Ruskin is all about.”

She said Ruskin is a tight knit community.

Michelle Tarrant said her heartache extended to her neighbors.

“But then getting to my own house and seeing everything damaged, destroyed, it was devastating,” she said.

Now, the Tarrants have to answer the question: ‘what comes next?’

“I don’t know,” Michelle Tarrant said. “We’re avid boaters, fishers, fishing, we love Ruskin.”

“But I don’t know,” she said. “I told my husband that I don’t want to go back, but I hope that changes.”

She said her next step will be restoring her home.

“We have flood insurance, because we’re in Zone A,” Michelle Tarrant said. “That’s kind of a hurry up and wait.”

“When it comes our turn, we don’t want more but we don’t want less,” she said. “We just want a fair shake and a new beginning I suppose.”

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