By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
Hurricane Idalia hit Cedar Key Wednesday with high-powered winds and a record 6.9-foot storm surge that inundated many homes and businesses with salt water and thick mud.
The center of Idalia remained 63 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico as it sped north toward landfall near Keaton Beach about 83 miles north of Cedar Key, lessening the impact on the island city.
Despite escaping a heavier blow, the hurricane remained 300 miles wide and was packing plenty of punch when its wind-driven storm surge hit Cedar Key.
City Councilwoman Sue Colson said the Dock Street business district looked better than expected after a storm of this magnitude, but the real damage hasn’t been revealed in other parts of the city.
“Sorry, it’s not visual. Inside, homes are full of mud and water, drywall, and machines are broken, stoves are broken, and refrigerators are broken. Things aren’t out on the street yet, but it’s going to be tough. It’s bad,” Colson said.
Law enforcement made a show of force near the number four bridge Thursday morning as a half dozen Florida Highway Patrol officers stood single file in fluorescent vests watching vehicles heading into the city. They were positioned to make certain only citizens of the island city along with business owners and the news media could gain entry.
A heavy law enforcement presence could be seen in the marina and Dock Street area as the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and Cedar Key Police Department posted officers in full view of the public in an effort to discourage looting.
City residents and waterfront businesses were in recovery mode on the first day after the storm hit.
Jolie Davis, who lives on 2nd Street in a home her great-grandparents built, rode out the storm and carefully watched the rising tide in her yard.
“We were scared it was going to get in the house. It would have been the first time ever. The house was built in 1911 by my great-grandparents,” she said. “The wind wasn’t bad. We’ve had worse. It was just the surf was higher.”
The storm tide never invaded the living area of her home.
Standing on a sidewalk along 2nd Street near the Cedar Key Historical Society Museum, she pointed to the water line left by Idalia on the exterior of her home. She said the water line is about 14 to 16 inches higher than the line left by Hurricane Hermine in 2016.
Anna White Hodges, executive director of the Cedar Key Historical Society Museum, said Hurricane Idalia was different from previous hurricanes in how it moved flood water on the museum property. She said Hurricane Idalia pushed water into some areas of the museum that had never been wet before and left other areas dry that should have been wet.
“It just came from a different area. It left standing water on high ground and the low ground was dry,” she said.
She said a historic mullet fishing boat that was perched on a stand under an open shed next to the museum was moved by the water away from the shed. The boat somehow floated between two trees and came to rest facing in the opposite direction from where it started.
Cindy Bonish, owner of Bonish Studio on 2nd St., said she came back to find the interior of her store and lounge covered in water and mud following the hurricane.
“It’s just a mud mess,” she said. “Basically, what we came into was a thick silty black mud. We just got a lot of water, more than Hermine.” She said the watermark on the walls was about 2 ½ to 3 feet off the floor.
She said they will have to wait for the city to turn on the municipal water supply back before they can use a pressure washer to get rid of the rest of the mud on the floor.
Mike Duncan, owner of Duncan’s on the Gulf, located on Dock Street, said his second-floor restaurant and main kitchen were spared from the storm, but his downstairs lounge suffered about $75,000 of damage. The rear stairway was lost. He said replacing the rear stairs will require someone with the right skills to do the work.
Tami Wilkes, nurse practitioner at Cedar Key Healthcare, was busy cleaning mud and water out of the medical facility. A volunteer, Denise Faries was trying to scrap a thick layer of mud off the sidewalk in front of the facility.
“It’s not bad at all compared to what we were expecting. We can breathe a big sigh of relief,” Wilkes said. “They said we got a 6.9 storm surge. When they were doing their computer models of the storm, my whole building was covered.”
The original storm surge predicted by the National Weather Service was 10 to 15 feet, but the storm never made a direct hit on Cedar Key as originally forecast. The center of the storm stayed 63 miles out to sea, generating a smaller surge and sparing Cedar Key and Dixie County from a direct hit.
“Our town is going to survive. That 15-foot surge they were calling for – that would have been difficult to recover from,” Wilkes said.
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Enterprise Reporting August 31, 2023; Posted September 1, 2023
