In St. Marks, residents await Hurricane Helene's wrath

ST. MARKS, Fla. − A handful of residents and business owners on Thursday morning watched the water rising by several inches every 30 minutes where two rivers meet before emptying into Apalachee Bay.

Along Florida’s Big Bend region, tens of thousands of coastal residents boarded up windows, fueled up their vehicles and stocked up on bottled water as Hurricane Helene bore down. Residents in the small fishing town of St. Marks, about 30 miles due south of Tallahassee, spent their morning preparing their homes for Hurricane Helene's arrival and hoping the storm continues to shift. The last hurricane to hit this area ran through there, sparing St. Marks the worst of the damage.

Around 11 a.m., stone crab fisherman Philip Tooke, 63, stood on the dock of his family-owned St. Mark’s Seafoods, watching the rain and for signs the wind direction was changing.

More:Hurricane Helene cranking up, racing toward Florida landfall today: Live updates

He’s had head-height floodwaters beneath his building several times over the years, but worried what a 15-foot storm surge would mean. His building is about 20 feet high.

He and his brother planned to ride out the storm aboard their fishing boats, letting out line as the water rises.

More:Hurricane Helene tracker: See projected path of 'catastrophic' storm as Florida braces

“You have to jump from one to another to let them keep rising with the tide,” he said. “It gets a little hairy.”

Their three boats, the Jenny Lee, the Susan D and La Victoria, are too big to trailer out, and although the brothers briefly considered motoring to Pensacola to safety, they ultimately decided to stick around.

Tooke hopes the storm tracks further east, where there’s little population.

“I feel sorry for them to the east but if we don’t get that direct hit we’ll be OK,” Tooke said. “It ain’t got ‘bad bad’ yet. It will be by tonight. It’s not going to be pleasant down here.”

A few doors down, marina owner Brett Shields was also preparing to stay. But he said he would probably leave if the forecast hits Category 3.

Shields and his crew pulled 77 boats out of the water over the past several days, and disconnected and removed the fuel pumps so they don’t get damaged.

Thursday morning, his store was open and he was offering free coffee to the handful of journalists in town. The sheriff’s office patrolled the streets constantly as the river rose, their pickups and cruisers splashing through the swirling water that covered portions of Riverside Drive by 11 a.m.

“We’ll get some wind. I can handle wind. The problem is the tide brings in all the marsh mud,” Shields said. “All we need is for it to go just a bit east of us so we don’t get the water.”

Brian Miller, 49, owns one of the houses closest to the bay, and Thursday morning, he unloaded food from his refrigerator before locking his front door.

He’s not worried about flood waters: built three years ago, his two-story modular house sits atop 17-foot concrete pillars, a requirement of the country’s new zoning code.

But he is worried that some of the boats tied up along the river might break loose during the wind and storm surge and crash into those pillars or the white wooden stairs leading up to his front door.

“It’s built to Category 5 standards, so I’m hoping it’s still standing after the storm,” said Miller, 49.

Residents and business owners here are no strangers to hurricanes.

In 2005, Hurricane Dennis sent a wall of chest-high water through the town, flooding Bo Lynn's Grocery and forcing then-owner Joy Brown to flee in a rowboat. Thursday, the store was closed up tight and the town virtually deserted.

Shields, the marina owner, watched from the second-story deck of his shop as the river rose past a concrete block he'd placed 10 minutes earlier to mark the water's edge.

"I'm tired of battling storms," he said. "Been doing this all of my life."

More:Hurricane Dennis pulverized parts of the Big Bend

And as the water rose, Tooke, the crab fisherman, worried about what this means for his future. Stone crab season begins Oct. 15 but crabbers are allowed to place traps before then.

Tooke and his brother fish all through the Apalachee Bay, up to 20 miles offshore, hauling up stone crabs to rip off one of their big claws. Crab claws can sell for upward of $70 a pound.

"Being that we're seeing this hurricane two weeks prior to the start of the season, this is probably going to hurt," he said. "There's no telling what this kind of storm will do to the crab."