After Helene and Milton, residents of Casey Key question its future

Dozens of piles of soggy furniture and other debris, coated in sand this week by Hurricane Milton, marked the homes that had flooded last month during Hurricane Helene. Most of those were older, single-story homes on the gulf side, but there was debris outside the Spanish-tiled villas on the other side of the road, too. Earth movers struggled to reconstruct a temporary road installed after Helene.

Massive pines, palms and other tropical trees that made up the key’s lush canopy had toppled in high winds. Underground power lines poked from the sand.

“We had just put everything back together,” he said. But now, “the island is unrecognizable.”

Bain, 45, moved here four years ago from New York with his wife. They have two daughters, ages 3 and 17 months. They were honoring his late mother-in-law’s wish that the house stay in the family, Bain said, and had hoped to pass on the blue single-story 1950s beach bungalow. They installed hurricane-safe windows and doors before the storms, ensured everything was up to code and sealed all they could, he said, but “water finds a way” — specifically, a hole behind the washing machine.

Now, Bain is not sure the eclectic paradise is worth the price, and he — like other residents — is grappling with questions whose answers could shape the future character of Casey Key and Florida’s other distinctive barrier islands battered by recent storms. After two massive landfalls in as many weeks, driven by climate change that ensures more in the future, can they survive the threat of seasonal destruction? Would engineering ways to improve their odds alter the natural beauty that drew them here? At what point is it better, easier even, to leave?

“Even my wife is questioning do we want to stay here,” Bain said as neighbors crept past him under a light rain Friday, carrying supplies and looking grim. “To do it once is one thing. But twice? It can’t be something that happens every year. We can’t afford it.”

In this area south of Sarasota, Casey Key is code for privilege. Tell construction crews you live here, he said, and you’ll pay “Casey Key prices.”

It’s true that some of the biggest mansions here have belonged to billionaires and celebrities, including Oprah, Rosie O’Donnell and the author Stephen King, who has been spotted walking his dog along the main road and wrote a book set on the adjacent — if fictional — Duma Key.

But Casey Key residents have historically been mixed in income, from its earliest days in the 1800s as a fishing camp, named after an Army captain involved in removing the Seminoles from Florida. There are construction project managers like Bain living alongside finance and venture capital consultants, airline pilots, doctors and lawyers. They cherish the funky inns, the absence of high-rise condos found to the north on Siesta Key, and mobile homes like those on Manasota Key to the south. They relish the secluded white-sand beaches, where they hunt for shells and sharks’ teeth, the unobstructed gulf views and the quick walk to boat and fish.

But the key is undeniably vulnerable to storm winds and surge. Julie Cooke, a pharmaceutical representative, had just installed a new dock and $30,000 boat lift before the double-whammy hurricanes destroyed them. She and her husband, a pilot, had planned to rebuild their 1978 home, and thus had dropped their insurance. And then came floods from Helene, so now they will have to pay the full cost of demolition. They suffered extensive roof and flood damage during Hurricane Ian two years ago, too, Cooke said.

“They’re gorgeous, but they have no protections. The barrier islands take the brunt and protect Sarasota,” Cooke said as she gathered yard debris with her children on Friday. “It’s a lot to go through. My 12-year-old, it’s her third time.”

Her husband is a devoted boater and they plan to rebuild, but Cooke has doubts about their future on the key after the recent storms.

“It is absolutely beautiful. But it does cause me to question the burden of that beauty,” she said.

Others questioned whether they would be forced to rebuild higher off the ground after the latest storms, changing the look and feel of Casey Key.

“What I love about this key is it has this ‘Old Florida’ feel, with small houses and funky hotels,” said Joanie Phillips, whose house flooded during both recent hurricanes, as she drove around the key with a neighbor. If new building standards require elevated construction, she said, “it will change the character.”

Phillips called the repetitive storms and cleanups “traumatic.”

“Doing it twice? We’re so tired,” said her husband, Paul Phillips. “We will see people who give up.”

He wondered aloud: “With climate change, is this the new normal?”

It’s not clear how many longtime Casey Key residents or businesses will leave.

At Harbor Lights Vacation Villas, a four-unit vacation rental, owners Ben and Rachel Neider returned to check damage and fix what they could on Thursday. They planned to rebuild, figuring storms are just part of life on the key.

“We’ve been through many,” said Rachel Neider, 47.

Their family has owned the property for 22 years and has seen storms become more destructive over time. Hurricane Ian destroyed their roof two years ago, and it took a year to restore before the home flooded again during Helene, they said.

They also worry recent storms are reshaping not just the key’s population, but the eight-mile-long spit of land itself. Helene ripped through northern sections of the key’s main road, forcing residents who wanted to check on their homes to pick their way past boulders, downed trees and power lines, and tread perilously close to surf pounding the sea wall.

The hurricane also washed out the key’s man-made causeway, Midnight Pass. It washed away loggerhead and gopher turtle nesting grounds, the sea grapes and sea oats that had anchored the dunes.

“The ocean keeps moving closer,” said Janet Schwartz, a retired attorney who moved to Casey Key from Pittsburgh after her husband fell in love with the yellow Old Florida-style house and its panoramic gulf views.

She loved the sunsets, too, and not living in a suburb and having Sarasota’s museums just an 11-mile drive north. But now she wonders whether the former owner, who had just built it, “bailed because of climate change.”

“We certainly believe in climate change. We thought we had more time — 20 years at least,” Schwartz said as she walked down her street, past waterlogged mattresses to where the road had washed out.

“I don’t know what we’ll do, because I can’t live like this,” she said. “There’s only so many times you can do this. We absolutely love it, but I just don’t know. You just can’t keep rebuilding, and I don’t know what insurance will cover.”

While some Casey Key residents say they’re leaving, others are hardening their defenses against stronger storms.

Brett Buggelin, 56, grew up coming to his grandparents’ house on Casey Key and just finished building a $4 million house when the storms hit. It is a concrete, elevated one-story, with hurricane glass. While neighbors were inundated with sand, the Buggelin home suffered only minor damage from the recent hurricanes — a glass deck barrier and fence destroyed.

When Buggelin and his wife came back after Hurricane Milton blew through, they had power from a generator and water from their own 250-gallon system — unlike most neighbors.

“We wanted to be self-sufficient,” said Kimberly Buggelin, 57, a Cajun Louisiana native accustomed to ferocious storms.

Her husband was amazed by how sand had overrun the island after the storms, something he had never seen in all of his years on the key. But it wasn’t enough to make him want to leave. “We’re staying,” he said.

Since David Ayres moved to Casey Key with his wife, Laura, and two sons from Maryland’s eastern shore three years ago, he learned to defend their sprawling 1930s wood-frame home from storms in the gulf.

Ayres, 61, and his 23-year-old son Raehe stayed during Helene. When they saw seawater overtop the sea wall and wash past the house across the street, they built makeshift dams, redirecting the water into a nearby alley across the key and back out to sea.

“We channeled the water,” he said on Friday as he pointed to where the surge had passed.

Before Milton, they shored up that channel with water-resistant plywood, which they also used to block the front gate and front door, adding a layer of sandbags at each.

“The whole family built our defenses,” said Ayres, who works in finance and venture consulting. He enlisted his next-door neighbor, helping him build a sand berm on the other side of the alley. Both credit the channel with preventing flooding at their houses during Milton.

Whatever you think of climate change, Ayres said, “there’s no question the water is warmer, and that is contributing to the ferocity of the storms. It’s part of the equation. So you have to harden your defenses.”

Still, Ayres’s wife, a Siesta Key native, is ready to leave after Helene destroyed her childhood home. She had just fixed it up as a rental after her mother died last year.

“She wants out of Florida,” Ayres said. But Ayres loves the hundred-year-old oaks surrounding their house and the wildlife that creeps over from a nearby preserve. They often see dolphins and manatees; sometimes bobcats venture into their yard.

“We’re debating in the family now whether we stay or not,” Ayres said.

Next door, James Villotti, a family practice doctor, was having a similar debate with his wife, Janet, also a Florida native.

Villotti, who is from Pittsburgh, has lived on Casey Key for 25 years and loves it despite watching wealthy seasonal residents with high fences and “West Palm Beach-style” houses increasingly replace locals.

But his wife dreaded hurricane season this year, fearing for their 4-year-old daughter. She rented a “safe house” inland for several months, he said, which is where they ended up after the storms cut their water and power.

After checking on his house Friday and fixing a few things, he headed out on foot to rejoin them, picking his way along the broken road next to aquamarine waves and a jetty where pelicans roosted.

“It’s getting a little tiring,” said Villotti, 73, but “I worked my whole life to enjoy this.”