ArcaMax

Are you OK?

How did you fare?

Storm victims woke pelting impossible questions into the ether, texting, posting, gathering debris and fishing furniture from toxic waters. Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 behemoth, plowed into Florida's Big Bend last week. The storm's impacts amounted to what experts in the lead-up kept calling a "reasonable worst-case scenario."

That's one of those wonky actuarial terms that manages to lose all meaning in reality. What is reasonable about a worst case? What's reasonable about any of this?

Hi, honey, it's your mom.

I have no power still, but we're fine.

The storm has claimed dozens of lives across the southeast, upending worlds from Florida to Appalachia. After Helene unleashed record storm surge in Tampa Bay, disaster teams worked furiously to clear roads, open bridges and get power back to a million customers. Fires raged. Businesses and homes in coastal communities were destroyed.

What have we learned? Well, we now know what 5 to 8 feet of storm surge looks like. We know whether or not homes can withstand that, what reinforcements they need before this happens again, because it certainly will. We know whether outdated sewage systems can handle the pressure; they can't.

But in a situation where reason has floated away, we still have much to learn, excruciating existential questions to ask our leaders, our communities, ourselves.

How can we make sense of water rushing into territory once thought safe? Should we adjust the concept of who evacuates, when and how? Can infrastructures survive both an influx of new Floridians and the mayhem of a major named storm each year?

Then there's the elephant in the room, the quandary too painful to definitively answer:

Are low-lying neighborhoods built on barrier islands, dredged mud and fill dirt something that can be safely, ethically rebuilt and developed? On a rapidly warming planet, in a state protruding into the ocean, in a region uniquely vulnerable to storm surge, is this how whole neighborhoods begin to fade away?

When do we start to say goodbye?

He said the whole place is demolished.

My parents' house is the same way.

Imagine if there's a direct hit?

Counterpoint: Maybe we are storm-hardened in a way we weren't a few years ago, each squall forcing a type of miserable cross-training. This time, the people of Tampa Bay seemed to embrace a wave of ingenuity and a spirit of inventiveness, spearheading a MacGyver-style industrial revolution of storm hacks.

Since homeowners routinely report waiting months to see any sort of relief from Florida's embattled insurance industry, they took a different track. In one flood-prone St. Petersburg neighborhood, residents circulated the idea to rent moving trucks and storage units. Instead of waiting half the year for help that may or may not arrive, they said, let's get U-hauls for a few days. Sandbags circulated as usual, but savvy homeowners also tried out new chemical compounds and inflatable flood barriers to seal doors.

Then there are the helpers, of course, the people offering to haul damaged boats and cars, to open their homes to the displaced, to cut timber, to gift a precious slice of air conditioning and Wi-Fi.

To sling a much-needed pancake as the phone rings off the hook.

Hello, yes, we're open.

I wrote this to you from the jam-packed Home Plate diner in Pinellas County's Dunedin, which miraculously had power in Helene's immediate aftermath. Residents without electricity crowded into booths, hungrily downing omelets, guzzling mimosas and coffee, debriefing, bursting out of Facebook posts and into real-life hugs. They shared the status of their businesses, swapped the illicit pleasure of a laugh when nothing seemed funny. They were together.

In a reasonable worst-case scenario, some questions are still too hard to answer. But some are an easier place to start.

How do you want your eggs?

Are you OK?

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Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. Follow her at @stephhayes on X or @stephrhayes on Instagram.

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Copyright 2024 Creators Syndicate Inc.