Florida evacuees return to damaged—or no—homes

Evacuated residents of Mexico Beach, Fla., are returning to pick through the remnants of their homes after Hurricane Michael, searching for any piece of their lives the storm didn’t destroy. In many cases, it’s not much. Nancy and Taylor Register returned Wednesday to find the camper they had lived in completely gone, with only a small stool, a hose, and one memento from a friend left behind. Nancy Register wept over the loss of an old, black-and-white photo of her mother, who died of cancer. Similar scenes played out throughout the devastated community. As Lanie and Ron Eden looked for items they left behind when they evacuated the beach house they’ve rented each October for years, they noted that Mexico Beach had been one of the few places in Florida that kept its small houses and 1950s feel while the rest of the state developed. “Basically, we lost ‘old Florida.’ It’s all gone,” Lanie Eden said.

Mexico Beach officials on the city’s Facebook page told residents who had evacuated ahead of the storm to stay away for a week after the Category 4 hurricane, which killed at least 20 people in Florida and 10 more in other states, made landfall last Wednesday. Many counties in the Florida Panhandle continue to deal with massive power outages: More than half of the homes and businesses in Bay County are without electricity, while 98 percent of customers in Calhoun County and 83 percent in Jackson County remain in the dark. State emergency management officials estimated 1,157 people continue to stay in shelters.