Judi Butler’s front yard near Gibsonton is filled with generations of memories, and all she can do is cry. Furniture, pictures, and other keepsakes are piled into a mound at least ten feet tall.
“It’s heartbreaking,” she said through tears. “I just don’t know what to do.”
She lives on Oak Street, a peninsula that juts out into the Alafia River.
It was a street that had never flooded before until Hurricane Helene.
“Oh, it brings me to tears. Scares me. I sit back and think, maybe I should have done something different. But I never thought it would happen,” she said.
Ring video from her home shows inches of flooding becoming feet. As the river level peaked, she ultimately had waist-deep water inside her home.
Her son showed up in a boat to rescue Butler, her daughter, and two grandkids from the living room window.
“I was just panicking. We were all panicking. We didn’t know what to do. Had never been in that situation before,” she said.
Butler is not alone on Oak Street. It seems that most homes, including Chuck and Sue’s, flooded.