CEDAR KEY, Fla.—Timothy Solano could feel the dread rise within him as he sat with his wife and three young children in the family’s Cadillac Escalade on the two-lane causeway leading into this island fishing village on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

Floodwaters had left the road ahead impassable, and Solano, a clam farmer for the family-owned business his father established nearly 30 years ago, could only speculate about the damage lying beyond what he could see.

Overnight, Hurricane Helene had swirled ashore some 95 miles northwest of here as a massive, fast-moving category 4 storm, packing winds of up to 140 miles an hour. In the waning days of September, the hurricane would carve a vast swath of destruction from Florida to western North Carolina, causing catastrophic flooding across southern Appalachia.

For Cedar Key, Helene was the third hurricane in 13 months. Idalia made landfall near here in August 2023 as a category 3 hurricane; about a year later, Debby hit the region as a category 1 storm. Milton would strike southwest Florida a mere 13 days after Helene as yet another category 3 storm, although that system would cause only minimal impacts in this part of the state.

Helene was the most catastrophic for Cedar Key. On some parts of the island, the hurricane unleashed a storm surge of at least 12 feet. Some residents still were rebuilding from Idalia when Debby passed over, and they were cleaning up from Debby when Helene arrived.

This extraordinary succession of hurricanes has left the tiny island village with an enormous reconstruction effort and an existential crisis. The future that collectively had been imagined by residents here, based on previous environmental patterns, effectively has been washed away, and a vision for what’s next has yet to gain consensus.

Can Cedar Key rebuild and still retain the old Florida charm that has set it apart from other coastal areas characterized by towering condos? In what ways can residents rebuild to better withstand the future storms and sea level rise that are inevitable? Could wealthy out-of-town investors swoop in and make over the community? The key to the town’s fate can be found in the hard-scrabble resilience of its residents.

Solano, 28, considered his own outlook as he sat at the wheel of the family’s car, surrounded by his wife, then-5-year-old son, 3-year-old daughter and baby daughter, not yet 1. He feared the family clam business was gone.

“I was worried I wasn’t going to be a clam farmer anymore,” he would recall.

Cedar Key sits three miles off the coast of Florida’s sparsely populated Big Bend region, so named for the way the peninsula meets the panhandle here.

The community, home to some 700 residents, is characterized by quaint historic cottages, with a town center consisting of pastel-painted shops and restaurants, some of which have reopened since Helene. The city hall was moved after Idalia to higher ground.

“You have no idea what it’s like to take your clerk’s office, your records, your city hall, your entire police department, and move it every time there is a warning,” Cedar Key Mayor Sue Colson said. “Do you know how disruptive that is? And crazy it is?”

Colson, 78, is a retired hospice nurse who in addition to serving as mayor also directs the Cedar Key Food Pantry and works at the Cedar Key Chamber of Commerce.

“I know when to recognize when things are terminal and when they’re not, and I also want the best use of life while you have it,” she said. “There may be hope, but you don’t want to get hung up on the hope to where you’re not realistic.”

Raised on Long Island, N.Y., Colson moved to Florida when she was 16 and eventually met her husband, a fifth-generation Floridian whose father was born in Cedar Key. The couple came here about 30 years ago so he could take up clam farming. Colson now moves slowly and walks with a stoop, but her manner is direct and no-nonsense. She never plans on leaving Cedar Key and eventually wishes to have her ashes scattered in the Gulf of Mexico.

“You can’t quantify that,” she said. “That’s something that’s either with you or not.”

Across the island debris piles loom, composed of large tree trunks and the splintered remains of homes and businesses. Helene destroyed or damaged at least 40 houses. The waterfront establishments were also badly damaged, and some were washed away entirely. With the grocery store still closed, the nearest supermarket is some 50 miles away. Still, life has carried on in this small town, where there are no traffic lights and lots of people get around on golf carts.

Several federal and state preserves line the coast in this region, with relatively pristine waters that support a thriving tourism industry based on boating, fishing, and other outdoors activities. The crystalline waters also are ideal for Cedar Key’s clam production, which accounts for more than 80% of the state’s shellfish aquaculture industry (consisting of clams and oysters). Primary draws in Cedar Key are the fresh seafood and stunning sunsets.

Forecasters had expected the 2024 hurricane season would be extraordinarily active, thanks especially to unusually warm sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. The season, which ended Nov. 30, featured 11 hurricanes, including five that made landfall in the continental U.S., according to the

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