After Hurricane Isaias, neighbors reckon with damage to their homes in Pensacola

Pensacolians picked up sticks and swept fallen leaves from their driveways, sidestepping downed power lines and analyzing how to remove fallen trees hours after Hurricane Isaias came to town.

Others had almost nothing left of their homes.

Cher Stanturf, accompanied by her two daughters, walked a Florida Phoenix reporter through the Welcome Mat Mobile Home Park, about 2 miles west of the Pensacola airport. 

The park had been ravaged by winds that sent trees smashing into Stanturf’s home and the homes of her neighbors. The community reconnected with each other while stepping over downed power lines and piling up tree limbs.

Rachel Velez, Stanturf’s daughter, said she had warned everyone she could in the trailer park to get out before the storm.

“I’m really happy that I stuck to my guns about going to a hotel room,” said Velez, who also lives in the trailer park.

Her mother had ridden out four hurricanes in her trailer home before, but Velez said this time, “I kept on her about leaving.”

Her daughters gave her no option, picking up their mother at 1 p.m. before the storm hit. 

In the middle of the night, “as soon as (the hurricane) let off, I came and picked her up and said, ‘Hey, we need to go check out our homes,’” Velez said. “I was devastated when I walked in here because I was right.”

‘What are you doing here?’

“Don’t be stupid,” Velez said, reciting what she heard an official from the sheriff’s office say on the news the day before. “You all know this hurricane is bad. What are you doing here?”

Stanturf said she was concerned her belongings were wet, with the inside of her home exposed after the wind pulled off an entire wall of the structure.

“I will tell you, after this, I will never, ever back down from telling people to get out. I will never,” Velez said. 

During a previous storm, Stanturf received assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to remove a fallen tree. She prepared to start the process all over again, putting in calls to FEMA and her power company.

Alex Mills, their neighbor, was trying to put the neighborhood back together, dragging tree limbs into a pile. “I could frown if I want to, but it still ain’t gonna change anything,” she said.

As of 7 a.m., 448,000 electricity customers in Florida were without power. Officials were inspecting the grid, Gov. Ron DeSantis said.

Some 90% of customers in Santa Rosa County lacked power; in Holmes County, it was 89%; in Washington, 86%; Walton, 85%; Escambia, 75%; and Okaloosa, 53%.

By mid-afternoon, over 400,000 Floridians still lacked power, according to poweroutage.us.

‘That wasn’t nothing’

In a neighborhood northwest of downtown Pensacola, a tree landed on Darryl Sweet’s house. The tree just damaged the corner of his house, he said, although “there’s probably some holes in the roof.”

“I’m miserable. Now I gotta figure out how my landlord (is) going to get somebody to get it removed,” Sweet said, who has lived in that house for eight years and in Pensacola for 45 years. 

“That wasn’t nothing,” Sweet said when asked how Isaias compared to other storms that have hit the city. “This one didn’t do that much damage, other than knock some trees down.”

A few blocks away, a tree lay across the street, having narrowly missed Gena Meeler’s car. 

Meeler and her husband moved to Pensacola after Hurricane Helene took out her husband’s business on St. Petersburg Beach and Hurricane Milton took out their house. 

“Total annihilation,” Meeler said, describing the aftermath of Milton. “We had our car and our dogs when we got here and an air mattress we picked up from Walmart.”

Hurricane Isaias spared her, aside from the perishables in her fridge going bad due to loss of power. “We were very thankful that we didn’t lose everything again,” Meeler said.