SUWANNEE, Fla. — Suwannee resident Billie Mincks didn't know where he was staying that night or how long he'd be displaced when Hurricane Idalia hit.

The storm surge from the Suwannee River seeped into Mincks' rental home along Florida's Big Bend, 161 miles north of Tampa on the state's west coast, that he shares with his girlfriend Tori Johnston. It ruined furniture and a fridge, and mud coated the floor.

He was moving some furniture out Thursday evening when someone pointed out the smoke down the road.

All the problems slipped from his mind quicker than the floodwaters from his home.

Smoke billows out of hurricane-stricken home

Mincks rushed over and joined a small group outside the house. They started throwing buckets of river water onto the structure, as Johnston ran around to alert neighbors to get more help.

“Buckets, we need buckets,” they shouted. Those buckets were quick to come, as more and more people joined the group.

The smoke’s source stood at the end of the road, a two-story house on a small peninsula surrounded by the Suwannee River. Mud mired that road, gray from the limestone beneath. 

The home survived the storm but was now on fire.

The home was owned by someone who lived elsewhere. Neighbors wanted to save the house after the hurricane damaged or destroyed their own homes. 

The faces facing the flames

Neighbors brought fire extinguishers, and workers from a local landscaping company tried to use a water pump as an improvised fire hose. 

The locals were joined by people from other parts of the state, including two USA TODAY NETWORK Florida journalists and Ruben Ayala. 

Ayala is one of the owners of Protek, a Tampa-based solar, HVAC and roofing company. He and a team traveled to Suwannee and other hurricane-affected communities to help out and see if anyone needed his company’s services. 

They were handing out water in the area when Johnston ran up and told them about the fire and joined the fray.

“Whatever it takes to help out,” Ayala said. 

Enigma, Georgia, resident Gage Walker drove his utility vehicle down the highway. He came to Suwannee to check in on his family’s house. They'll have to replace the furniture, walls and flooring. And their boats weren't where they left them.

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“One of our boats is out in the woods,” he said. “We gotta go get it.”

Walker's focus shifted when he saw the smoke rising from the house, but he couldn't get close with emergency vehicles blocking the road. So, he undressed except for his shorts and a silver necklace and swam across the river. He refilled buckets while standing in the river, as others had done before him.

“I just knew I needed to help,” Walker said later that evening. He wore a shirt again, but it was wrapped around his right foot. He cut his big toe on something in the mud.

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Mud and water problems

Dixie County Fire Rescue’s Mandy Lemmerman said the fire was still under investigation. Some believed it was caused by water damage.

“Sea breeze helps ventilate and push that fire,” she said. “The more oxygen, the bigger the fire can get. And the closer the homes, the faster it can radiate and spread.”

That Thursday presented logistical problems though: They couldn’t get close to the fire. The first fire truck that arrived got stuck in the mud, and the others were “sliding all over the place,” said Lemmerman, the battalion chief. They had to use “a lot of extra hose” as a result. 

Lemmerman emphasized that she didn’t want the public to ever put themselves in a position where they were harmed in the process of helping. But she said it was fortunate people like Ayala, Mincks and Walker were there to help with the hoses.

“The first arriving unit was a good 20 minutes away, and it’s just two men, and you need to wait for more and more people to get there,” Lemmerman said. “Anytime we can have, especially with long hose lays like that, just hands to be able to drag that hose … it's always super, super helpful and beneficial for us.”

The water supply was down, so firefighters couldn’t pull anything from the hydrants. And while they could usually take water from the nearby river itself, the debris and low tide made that untenable. They used water from the fire trucks and tankers, and later shuttled those tankers to and from a water source a mile away.

Lemmerman said multiple responding firefighters needed medical attention that night, some requiring IV fluids. They're a small crew and the hurricane created a lot of work over long hours.

“They were just spent,” Lemmerman said, though she added that they’re fine now.

#SuwanneeStrong

An hour before the fire, Frank Couch stood in the mud coating the first floor of his weekend house. 

Furniture and other items had been loaded in trailers or stuffed upstairs a day before the hurricane, and he was glad for it. He was also glad the storm didn’t hit as badly as he expected. It veered more west than early projections had put it. 

“We were expecting this house not to be here,” he said. 

He estimated the damage to his home to be less than $20,000.

“I can fix my place after a couple years, saving 12 grand a year,” Couch said. “We’re just going to take all the drywall off, everything gone, and start over and put stuff in (that the water) won’t affect next time.”

He’d already gotten a lot of help from friends – and helped friends in return. A short while later, he was hurling water into and onto a stranger's burning house.

“Every able body that was around there, they all jumped in and helped,” Couch said. “That’s what I like about this place. Everybody seems to help everybody with everything."

Mincks, who has lived in Suwannee since childhood, said the evening confirmed what he already knew: "We are a pretty tight community."

Johnston said it changed her opinion about the town, where she's lived since 2021.

“To me, it looked like the community was very to themselves, and only really helped friends and family,” she said. “I see it a lot differently now.”

She has a sticker on the back window of her car, made by a local after the storm. It reads: “#SuwanneeStrong.”

How to help

  • Donate to the Red Cross at https://www.redcross.org or text RELIEF2023 to 41444. To volunteer, contact 850-491-2997.
  • Help feed those in the strike zone through Second Harvest of the Big Bend at FightingHunger.org/Idalia.
  • Donate to the United Way of the Big Bend at uwbb.org/disaster-relief-fund.

With Tallahassee escaping the brunt of Hurricane Idalia's wrath, this story is part of a continuing series profiling hard-hit communities. USA Today Network-Florida First Amendment reporter Douglas Soule is based in Tallahassee, Fla. He can be reached at DSoule@gannett.com. Twitter: @DouglasSoule.

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