KEATON BEACH, Fla. — Three generations of Betheas walked around what remained of their house in this beach community, finding much of it still in one piece — but now sitting a quarter-mile from its original location.

The storm waters from devastating Hurricane Helene, which made landfall nearby, had picked up the one-story house and slammed it into pine trees on the other side of a parking lot.

“One of my friends called and said, ‘I think I found your beach house,'” said Courtney Bethea, as she and her family surveyed the damage on Friday evening.

The beige house surrounded by porches has been in the family for nearly 30 years and is their full-time home. Under the previous owner, it had survived the “storm of the century” in 1993, which devastated the community in Taylor County along Florida’s Big Bend. It survived Hurricane Idalia last year. But with this latest storm, the Betheas and people up and down this beautiful but perilous stretch of coast are wondering whether it makes sense to keep going.

Storms are more frequent. Many can’t get insurance. Still, it’s home — the place they know and love. “I hope we rebuild,” Bethea said of their Keaton Beach house, before adding “I don’t think it’s sunk in yet.”

Hurricane Helene made landfall late Thursday, packing 140 mph winds and pushing what Gov. Ron DeSantis called “monumental storm surge” into coastal communities that likely topped 15 feet. Its deadly toll in Florida and elsewhere has now topped 50 people.

DeSantis, speaking Saturday morning at Dekle Beach where Helene made landfall, said the storm caused “much, much more significant” damage than Hurricane Debby last month or Hurricane Idalia last year, which both hit the same Big Bend area. Helene, he said, left “just complete obliteration” in its wake along parts of the Gulf Coast.

The 100-mile stretch from Cedar Key to Perry has been hit three times in 13 months by three hurricanes and the damaging winds and floodwaters and power outages they brought with them.

Each time, residents navigated roads blocked with fallen trees and power lines, cleared their properties, mucked out their homes, haggled with their insurance companies, repaired their boats, replaced their roofs, raised new barns and planted new crops and kept going.

They started over instead of leaving this remote, sparsely populated and mostly rural region of lowlands and pine barrens known as Nature’s Coast. But with the region turning into Florida’s latest Hurricane Alley, and Helene’s punch so ferocious, some residents aren’t sure how much more they can put up with or afford.

“Three in 13 months. I don’t know if that’s on record happening anywhere else,” said Scott Peters, a charter fishing captain and owner of Crabbie Dad’s Bar & Grill in Steinhatchee, which was also decimated by Helene.

Peters bought the restaurant 19 years ago when he was 26 and built it up, only to watch it severely damaged by Idalia last year. He put everything into getting it fixed, and Helene destroyed all that work in an instant, he said.

After Idalia, Peters bought flood insurance and had the restaurant insured enough to remodel it, if it was damaged again — but not enough if it was totaled.

“It’s a whole different ball game,” he said of the losses he suffered from Helene.

Now, he’s wondering if he should pocket any insurance money and walk away, or use the money to rebuild something smaller.

“This is my livelihood. It’s my business,” he said. “What do you do? Walk away and work for someone else? It’s hard to walk away.”

Concerned about rising sea levels, Jack Payne sold his beloved home on Cedar Key three years ago, before it was slammed three times in a row by hurricanes Idalia, Debby and Helene.

“The odds for a catastrophic event keep increasing dramatically and the best evidence are all of these very strong hurricanes that are occurring at a much faster rate than ever before,” said the former senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

“I decided to sell because I became convinced that it just isn’t sustainable to live on the water in Florida anymore,” Payne said.

He had three offers in one day and sold it in a week after putting it on the market for twice the amount he paid for it.

“I found that demand unbelievable. Why would anyone put that kind of money in a house that could disappear in any hurricane season?” he said.

His conclusion: Too many deny science. “I think the dream of many people is to still have a house on an ocean. They make a huge investment, then experience a damaging event, restore their damaged property and are now more leveraged and more invested.”

Many people haven’t experienced the impacts of climate change firsthand and think that if they survived the last storm it will be years before the next one comes along, if ever, Payne said.

“But now the frequency and the intensity of these storms are making people sit up and notice,” he said. “Climate change is real, and it becomes more real when they no longer can get insurance,” he added.

More people may sell like he did, “however, for those already heavily invested, hope will continue to spring eternal in their breast!” Payne said.

Inside the Betheas’ beach house, some coffee cups were still neatly stacked on shelves and a few paintings were still on walls, but nearly everything else was chaotically strewn about the rooms.

Outside, Courtney Bethea had piled what could be scavenged from their water-logged house onto a dock. The dock didn’t belong to the family, and they didn’t know where it came from, making it another bewildering piece of their storm-altered world and uncertain future.

“We’ve never, ever seen anything like this before,” said Kim Bethea, Courtney’s mother.

And it was the little things “the little stupid things” that seemed to hurt the most, she said. “We had just bought a brand new bed from Badcock’s, a queen-size bed. Had it set up, and nobody even slept on it.”

The family wants to hold onto their plot of land, now so far from the house they couldn’t see it when they explored the damage building. But it was going to be difficult.

“We had dropped insurance on it this year because flood insurance had skyrocketed out of this world,” she said. “We have no insurance. I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Kim Bethea said.

They had talked about getting a trailer, she said, so when another storm comes they can just “pick up and leave.”

James Bethea, Courtney’s father, said he fears rebuilding will be expensive for his family and everyone else on the Big Bend that lost their homes.

“You have to build it way up in the air, and people can’t afford it,” he said. “Most people can’t. You’re talking $500,000 to $600,000 to build a house now.”

Even if he could pay for it, he added, as a senior citizen, building up higher would have a personal downside: Having to walk up and down 19 feet of steps every time he wanted to leave the house.

“I don’t know if I want to,” he said.

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