MEXICO BEACH, Fla. _ What will be a long and grueling cleanup at ground zero of Hurricane Michael started in force early Friday with residents like Chris Hester taking on the work with their own hands.
Hester's first task _ ripping out the rain-soaked carpet from his condo. "To start to keep the mold from coming into effect," he said, hauling out a foul, heavy mess.
Just two days after the fiercest of Michael's 155 mph winds and roof-level surge literally flattened most of the homes and businesses in the small beachside community, recovery efforts were kicking into gear. The work began against a backdrop of ruin in the form of mammoth mounds of splintered walls, whole displaced roofs and crushed cars.
Mexico Beach Mayor Al Cathey, a hardware store owner, borrowed a satellite phone from a TV news crew and finally got through to a store outside the disaster zone. "Get me what you got," he barked, kneeling down to pick up tiny nails from the pavement. "We're going to be here a while. We need generators. Have you got any more gas cans? All right buddy, you're a life saver."
Soon, heavy equipment arrived, along with tree trimmers, insurance inspectors, National Guard Humvees and Florida Gov. Rick Scott. With a roar, a bulldozer cleared the main road one twisted chunk of debris at a time. Volunteers handed out Dr Peppers and water bottles.
Crews with National Storm Contracting, which has cleaned up storm damage across the Southeast United States, had only to go down the road a few miles from their headquarters in Port St. Joe. The giant claws of their grapple trucks plucked hunks of wood off the street and into the back of the vehicle's bed.
"This time, the storm came to us," said the company's executive assistant, Kaitlyn Holder, as she held a clipboard and watched the crews work.
The work pace picked up steadily through the day, even though the scale of the disaster seemed overwhelming and no one had electricity, running water or cellphone service.
Even Scott, who has toured a number of hurricane zones in the last two years, seemed stunned at the severity of the damage.
"Mexico Beach ... it's like a bomb went off. It's like a war zone," Scott said during his visit Friday morning. Federal Emergency Management Director Brock Long called it "wiped out." The only upbeat news: no reported deaths.
Just 30 miles from Panama City, the largest town in Bay County, Mexico Beach has just over 1,000 residents and was a destination known for a quiet family-style appeal that drew vacationers, mostly from Georgia, and many part-timers.
That charm was scoured away. Destroyed were restaurants with names like Toucan's and Mango Marley's. The building that housed Frost's Pottery vanished completely, leaving vivid Mexican-style shards spilled out on the road.
The sheer devastation shocked homeowners who returned on Friday. The storm surge collapsed a portion of U.S. 98 near the famed El Governor hotel, which lost an entire wing of its complex. It's pool also disappeared completely.
U.S. 98 became a minefield of debris: a few whole houses, countless wood beams, ripped up AC units, dressers, cars deposited atop other cars. A red truck, which was parked under a condo overhang before the storm, got flung a couple homes away into the brush � on the opposite side of a canal.
The smaller debris dotting the main street underscored happier beach times: a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle plastic beach bucket, a fake Christmas tree, a Cinderella child's book, a kayak, a pool table. A DVD of the biographical movie "The Hurricane," starring Denzel Washington, lay caked in sand.
Down the road, Tammy Pullen arrived with her daughter to start piling up their trashed belongings buried in the muck outside their condo. The efforts were cosmetic, just a way to keep busy and feel helpful.
"We're just trying to make room, trying to pick up a bit. We don't really know what to do," Pullen said.
Upstairs, husband Joey Pullen was drilling a metal sheet over the blown-out window of their second-story unit, to at least keep out the rain. He'd meant to do it before Hurricane Michael but time ran out. He walked down the stairwell, crunching a carpet filled with glass bits.
"Where do you start? I don't know where to begin," Joey Pullen said, sighing.
Many of the efforts started with residents themselves. Ashley and Clary Crosby, who live in Georgia but own a home in Mexico Bay, surveyed the damage in a rugged camouflaged golf cart. They were waiting for reinforcements. Their family company had dispatched dump trucks and excavators to help clear the roads.
"Most people in this little town will be back. And they'll be down here as soon as they can," Ashley Crosby said. "That's just how close this little town is and how much it means to everyone."
Then there was Mayor Cathey, who drove up and down the beach, followed by reporters, giving sound bites in a deep Southern drawl. He said a command post was being set up to coordinate relief efforts for residents, all of whom have now been accounted for.
The recovery, he said, will not be easy.
"We don't have any water, sewer, power," Cathey said. "I don't even know how long that will take. ... As devastating as this is, hopefully this will be a distant memory in a couple years. But it's certainly going to be months."
