Feather Sound resident spreads hope a year after Helene

CLEARWATER, Fla. — A year ago on Sept. 26, Tampa Bay area residents woke up to the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

Some of our neighbors are still facing challenges.

Some still rebuilding and some trying to make it better for the community.

Lisa Crawford experienced the same uncertainty that came after the storm.

Her contractor is still nailing down the final changes to her home.

“Everything is coming out great,” she said. “The paint just needs some touch-ups.”

The contractor, Alex Erazo, worked on the crown molding finishes of the project earlier this September.

Crawford had to wait until May to get started on her rebuild.

She retold her experience from that night in late September of last year.

“When’s it going to stop? Like we didn’t know if it was going to be three inches or three feet,” she said. “We truly did not know that, and we sat on the stairway and watched as the water started to rise.”

She lives in the Feather Sound community of Clearwater, on the edge of Old Tampa Bay.

What she saw out her window that night was what was supposed to be a golf course.

But it had become something different.

“We watched furniture, little furniture floating by and we sort of giggled about it because we didn’t know what else to do,” she said.

She confessed it was no laughing matter.

At daybreak, she had about a foot of water inside her home. The entrance to her neighborhood was underwater.

She said her story is like other recollections from that morning.

The wooden floors of her home had to be ripped out. Some of the rooms and walls on the lower level of the house had to be gutted.

Crews tossed out the furniture to the curb, while piles of debris soon covered driveways.

Today, the recovery work is ongoing.

Erazo, who is working on Crawford’s home with the rebuild part of the project, said he started the cleanup phase a week after Helene passed through at other homes in the area.

One year after Crawford’s kitchen got wrecked, it is just now starting to measure up to her expectations.

Meantime, Crawford is also building up her community. She started an effort to share positivity.

“Just to spread the message,” Crawford said. “Let’s stay strong, we’ve got each other’s back. We’re here, all you have to do is ask.”

She created hundreds of wristbands with messages of hope and is handing them out.

“As devastating as it feels, you do get to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.

She wants other communities to spread the message too and is accepting requests from people who contact her through the Nextdoor app.

She admits it does take a long time to recover, and others have had it worse. She said though to stay positive through the process.

And Helene is only half of her story.

She evacuated before Hurricane Milton which impacted the Bay area a couple of weeks after Helene. She came back to find more damage to her home such as a hole in her bathroom.

Like the Trop in downtown St. Pete which had its roof torn apart, Crawford’s pool cage got ripped apart too.

But even on a cloudy day, she still believes there is a rainbow after every storm.