SARASOTA, Fla. (WFLA) — On St. Armands Circle, business owners are working as quickly as possible to return to business as usual after historic storm surge from Hurricane Helene.
The St. Armands Circle Association told us “all first level merchants were impacted by the storm surge, as well as a large percentage of residents.”
The Tunaskin Aquatic Apparel store was emptied out when News Channel 8 stopped by Monday. Crews were hard at work cleaning the floors of the muck and mess Helene left behind. Fortunately for this business, they moved all of their merchandise to higher ground before the storm arrived.
“Two years ago, almost to the day, we lost our Fort Myers Beach location,” events director Ben Duval said. “Everyone in the company and everyone who is around it, was kind of very leery of this storm. Some people said it will be like any other storm and there’s always those people, but we were a little more cautious because we had been through it two years ago and we moved everything up.”