Horseshoe Beach hell: Idalia's wrath leaves tiny Florida town's homes, history in ruins

HORSESHOE BEACH, Fla. − Herman “Pork Chop” Neeley thought he could hunker down in his seaside home and make it through Hurricane Idalia. Then he saw the storm surge.

Neeley, 78, heard his house rattling just after dawn Wednesday morning. He had just begun to sense the force of the hurricane smashing through Florida's Big Bend area and his hometown of Horseshoe Beach, population 169 as of the 2010 census.

He opened his front door and saw the warm Gulf of Mexico water rushing toward him. By the time he got his socks and boots on, it was up to his knees.

“I told myself ‘It’s time for you to go now,’” he said. “'Get the hell out of Dodge.'”

Neeley was one of more than a dozen Horseshoe Beach locals whose homes were totaled − in his case, a seafoam green rancher his father built in 1962.

He and others who spoke to USA TODAY said they had never seen such a storm rip through their secluded town on the Gulf − not Hurricane Hermine in 2016, and not the great “no-name storm” in 1993.

“It was nothing you could imagine,” Neeley said after describing a narrow escape in his Chevy Silverado truck as the wind and storm surge toppled power lines. After the worst of it passed, he went back to find his house knocked off its blocks and the interior destroyed.

Many of his neighbors say homes that were still standing after Hurricane Hermine were destroyed by Idalia.

“Pretty much everything that’s left standing was already rebuilt,” said John Neal, who owns a landscaping business on Horseshoe Beach. “They’re not family homes that have been here for generations.”

He and his wife, Carla Neal, had to tell 10 of their friends that they had lost everything.

“It’s tough to call people and tell them their house is gone,” John Neal said. “It’s terrible, actually.”

The couple and their three kids, ages 7 to 14, helped clean up the hollowed building that, a day earlier, was a popular marina run by Dennis Buckley, a local landowner the pair call “Grampy B.”

The storm destroyed four houses Buckley owned and rented, as well as a marina and a hotel, the Angler's Inn. His only house still standing after the hurricane was the one he lives in with his wife just behind the marina.

The marina had a small pub attached to it, Jake’s Bar. It was named after a Labrador retriever that Buckley and his wife had to put down months before they reopened the shop, which had been closed for years. 

On Thursday, antique soda machines, bicycles and rotary phones, which had decorated the marina, lie mangled with chunks of metal and tree limbs. Debris had been hurled hundreds of feet away.

In the muck, Carla Neal found her great-grandfather’s fishing pole that used to hang over the door of the shop.

“We need to keep this,” she said as she handed it to her 12-year-old son, Ethan. “There’s not much else here.”

Neeley, whose nickname "Pork Chop" comes from his plump childhood, said he knew his house was a total loss. But when he got back to see it, he was astounded at the damage.

“Look, see how it moved the freezer and the washer-dryer?” Neeley said, pointing to each item. “How’d it do that? It blew the walls out.”

The interior and exterior of the home was streaked with mud that leveled off in an almost straight line.

“It’s at least 5 feet high,” Neeley said, holding his hand straight across his chest, demonstrating the height of the surge. “I almost didn’t make it.”

On the white wall just beside the front door read a note scrawled in black magic marker: “SEPT. 1, 2016 Hurricane Hermine.” Next to it was a straight line across and an arrow pointing to it.

“See that?” Neeley said. “Now this one yesterday killed my house.”

Neeley makes his living installing roofs and fixing boats. He learned his way around a boat engine from his father, a commercial trout fisherman. Neeley, along with his seven siblings, grew up on the same street he still lives on.

“I know everybody and everybody knows me,” he said.

Neeley didn't hesitate when asked about his plans for the future: "I’m going to get me a trailer … get everything cleaned up. And then I’m going to start to build me a house.”

Just then, two men in a Red Cross van stopped in front of the house.

“You hungry?” one man said. “Want any food?”

“I’m all right,” Neeley said. “Got any beer or whiskey?”

Contact Christopher Cann by email at ccann@gannett.com or follow him on X @ChrisCannFL.