ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. — At least 123 people died in connection to Hurricane Helene across the South. Of those, 13 were in Florida and 11 of them were right here in the Tampa Bay area.
That includes one 79-year-old woman in St. Pete Beach who drowned after storm surge entered her home.
Marjorie Havard’s son was in Ohio when the storm hit. He says she didn't want to leave and be a burden to others, but when they last spoke she said water was rushing into her home.
"I'm really, really sad about my mom,” her son Todd Webb said who lives half the year in a house a few blocks down. “One of the best upbringings I think I could have.”
He says Havard worked as a carpenter at nuclear power plants, replacing rotted wood from cooling towers. She learned how to ride dirt bikes and motorcycles and rode a Harley Davidson.
But in her late 70s, she had trouble walking. Todd last spoke to his mom around 9 p.m. last Thursday, the night Helene battered barrier islands. He urged her to go to her sister in Sarasota but she stayed.
“She said, ‘I'd be fine right here,’” he remembers. “She didn't want to be a burden… she wasn't strong enough at 79 to get herself up.”
He last told her to stay on her bed but he knows she tried using a shop vac to suck up the water that was rising inside.
“She must have got off her bed,” he thinks. “[She] tripped in the three feet of water and drowned.”
He’s now not only cleaning up his mother’s home but his own home down the street. Cars, motorcycles, possessions — Helene destroyed it all.
“It's just horrible,” he says of the devastation. “It's the worst disaster I’ve ever seen."
The retired airline pilot doesn’t know if he’ll stay to rebuild.
“It's paradise,” he says. “But right now, you know, with the circumstances, it's not a good place to be right now.”
And there’s no replacing his mother, which is why he says if you’re told to evacuate, do it.
“I say get out,” he says. “You gotta get out.”
Out of the 11 deaths in the Bay Area from Helene, nine were in Pinellas County. All nine who died in the county lived in mandatory evacuation zones.
These are the victims of the storm in Pinellas, according to the sheriff’s office:
66-year-old Donna Fagersten of Indian Rocks Beach
80-year-old Patricia Mikos of Dunedin
71-year-old Aiden Bowles of Indian Rocks Beach
79-year-old Marjorie Havard of St. Pete Beach
71-year-old Francis Wright of Madeira Beach
89-year-old Jerome Waite of St. Petersburg
55-year-old James Thompson of Redington Shores
37-year-old Rachel Burch of Treasure Island
Plus one more person who has not been named pending notification of next of kin.