ST. PETERSBURG – Along the criss-crossing streets of Shore Acres, homes were connected by a devastating cord – at least 4-foot water lines marked low-lying homes.

On Friday afternoon, residents assessed the damage caused by Hurricane Helene with its record nightly storm surge. St. Petersburg experienced flooding of more than 6 feet and, according to the city, more than 100 miles of flooded streets.

“If you want to stand outside and scream, that’s fine,” Kevin Batdorf, president of the Shore Acres Civic Association, wrote in the neighborhood’s Facebook group Friday morning. “We understand.”

Beth Cullen, 59, and her daughter Maddy, 18, loaded their Tesla with clothes and essentials on Friday afternoon. Earlier that morning, water had flowed into their home, reaching up to the teen's waist.

“I was terrified, I was having panic attacks,” Maddy said. “It was really scary not knowing if the water would continue to rise.”

Cullen, who works for Fox 13, was at the station covering the storm as the home was flooded.

Maddy had planned to stay with her grandparents, Cullen said. But after Maddy's father, Cullen's husband, decided not to go, Maddy decided to stay.

“I wouldn't leave my father either,” Cullen said.

The couple spent a harrowing night together as floodwaters poured into the house. The power remained on in the bedrooms and sparks flew over the water, Maddy said.

Eventually Maddy and her father made it to their attic, where they huddled in the dark for hours, riding out the rest of the surf.

By daylight the house was in ruins. The refrigerator had tipped over, the TV stand was cracked in several places, and mud and debris were strewn across the floor.

A pungent smell of burning wafted from a street over on the afternoon breeze. A house had caught fire overnight and was now a shell of blue concrete and steel.

A neighbor near the charred home, Wesley Obenshain, 19, suspected an electric golf cart may have started the fire. Salt water and electricity are a dangerous combination.

Obenshain's stepfather, Dan Henry, 52, has lived in their Shore Acres home for more than 20 years. As of Friday, no flooding occurred.

Her house is higher than most on the street and is usually dry. Henry had planned to stay overnight, but after the water rose above the level they saw during Hurricane Idalia around 5 p.m. Thursday, he decided it was time to go. He rode a paddleboard from the neighborhood.

“It just wasn’t worth it,” Henry said.

Around 2 p.m., Patrick Donohue, 65, walked barefoot with his girlfriend Barbara Jones, 57, to Donohue's home in Shore Acres on Alabama Avenue NE. It would be the first time he would see the house since Helene had been evacuated to Tampa overnight.

He expected there would be some flooding on the lower level, maybe a few inches or so – a “good outcome,” he said.

In the few years he had lived there, storms had never pushed the water higher than the third level. There was a three-foot crawlspace under his house, he said.

When he got home he stopped and stared.

“Look how high the water is up to the window.”

Donohue unlocked his door and stepped over sandbags and tarps. The inside of the house stank of stale seawater. The floors were muddy and the furniture was overturned. Water pipes reached to the middle of the doors.

“Devastating,” Donohue said.

The 65-year-old had just completed an extension to his house. The brand new floors were soaked and the drywall was darkening where it was still wet.

“I don’t know what to do from here.”

At another home on Overlook Drive NE, Bridgett Hickerson, 31, was on the phone with her roommate.

“It's Bridgett, it's devastating,” she said, standing among her daughter's scattered and destroyed toys. “Like 3 feet of water.”

Hickerson had moved in just two weeks earlier with her five-year-old daughter, Lily.

Through tears, she said her important documents, such as a birth certificate, had been destroyed.

Her daughter's drawings, which she treasured throughout her life, were also destroyed.

“Everything is gone,” he said.

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