TREASURE ISLAND, Fla. — In the wake of Hurricane Helene, the Bilmar Beach Resort on Treasure Island is now grappling with a heartbreaking “first.”
"The property got the most damage in the history of the Bilmar. Which is a 63-year history,” the resort’s general manager Clyde Smith said.
They’re now dealing with 27 rooms that need to be gutted, at least a dozen canceled or postponed weddings and an estimated $10 million in damage.
But even in the midst of that, they’re also working to provide hope.
Crews at the resort worked overtime Wednesday to reopen their restaurant, which was largely untouched by the storm.
They brought in portable hand washing stations and bottled water to help get things going as the city worked to restore water to some and asked others with running water to boil it for the time being.
Smith told 10 Tampa Bay it was in an effort to give people a sense of normalcy.
“I think the community needs that. We’re tired of eating peanut butter and jelly,” he said.
It's a feeling the city's mayor, Taylor Payne, said they're going to need as they rebuild.
"Pretty much every home on Treasure Island has suffered a tragic loss,” he said.
And as they do, he is reminding folks that the rules of recovery have changed because of FEMA’s 50% rule.
"If your home was damaged more than 50% of the value of the structure. You have to either lift up the existing structure or tear it down and build a new one,” he said, "Treasure Island is gonna look completely different than it does now in several years because I think there's gonna be people that just wanna leave the neighborhood because they don't wanna ever go through something like this again."
Wednesday, Payne also issued a reminder to people about electricity restoration.
He asked people to make sure their main breaker is turned off so that when crews do restore power to their homes, waterlogged wiring doesn't spark a fire.